The Daily Stoic - Ask Daily Stoic: Chris Guillebeau

Episode Date: April 4, 2020

In this super-sized edition of Ask Daily Stoic, Ryan talks about his visit to a mastermind event in Nashville, where he shared ideas and inspiration with other successful authors. Ryan also chats with Chris Guillebeau, author of The Art of Non-Conformity, The $100 Startup, and the upcoming book The Money Tree: A Story About Finding the Fortune in Your Own Backyard.This episode is brought to you by Go Macro. Go Macro is a family-owned maker of some of the finest protein bars around. They're vegan, non-GMO, and they come in a bunch of delicious flavors. Visit http://gomacro.com and use promo code STOIC for 30% off your order plus free shipping.This episode is also brought to you by Four Sigmatic. Four Sigmatic is a maker of mushroom coffee, lattes, elixirs, and more. Their drinks all taste amazing and they've full of all sorts of all-natural compounds and immunity boosters to help you think clearly and live well. Visit http://foursigmatic.com/stoic to get 15% off your order.***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.Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: DailyStoic.com/signupFollow Ryan:Twitter: https://twitter.com/ryanholidayInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanholiday/Facebook: http://facebook.com/ryanholidayYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another Saturday episode of Daily Stoic. On Saturdays, we sort of explore some stuff and I just got off of playing yesterday. I landed. I was in Nashville for about a day and a half. Twice a year now, I do these sort of masterminds with authors. Got invited to one a few years ago that James Clear put on. This is another one that James Clear was at.

I won't sort of say who's in the groups somewhat private, but it's been this sort of transformative and actually deeply beneficial experience for me. We fly to a place, usually sort of a central location for everyone, and over a day or a couple days, a bunch of people who are in the same industry, but in some ways you could argue our competition with each other, we get down and we share ideas and approaches and best practices and we ask each other questions about what's working and what's not

working and we give each other feedback. It's been this really interesting experience to watch as some of the authors in the group have gone on to sell literally millions and millions of books to watch as other authors have struggled with stuff. One of the things that I love about being an author that's a little bit different than I think other professions is even that idea of competition is a little bit strange because authors really aren't competing with each other. What we're really competing with is like getting people to read. And so Seneca has this interesting thing

where he talks about like, can you be as happy for other people's success as your own? And watching some of these authors sort of take off in the stratosphere, James being another one, is a sort of both inspiring and challenging thing. How do you actually do that? How can you, we did a daily stoke the email not that long ago about not seeing the world as zero sum?

And I think one of the best things I've learned and tried to do in my career is not see it as zero sum. Someone else's success is not come at the expense of my success. Just as my success doesn't come at the expense of anyone else's. In fact, as a stoke said, we're kind of all in this project. We're all just supposed to be fulfilling

and realizing our potential. And this is what makes the whole project work. But really why the, I think the masterminds have been so good for me is that often you get sort of trapped in your own ghetto. So you're, you're focusing on your problems, you're thinking about your stuff, you have, you know, your colleagues, you have your systems, and your own experiences are not diverse or wide enough to really teach you all that you need to know. And so to have a group of other people who are having their own unique experience,

then opens you up to learning a whole bunch of things. I have that quote in, ego is the enemy about how only a fool learns by experience. You want to learn from the experiences of others. Every time I go to one of these things, I come back with just like note cards or notepads or emails filled with a whole bunch of stuff that I wasn't even thinking about doing that I then can apply to my own career. I remember I went Tim Ferris put on one of these many years ago, almost 10 years ago now,

and I remember, I spoke in it, but I remember when he put it on, it was $10,000. And I thought, like, who could possibly, who could and who would pay $10,000 to a tentative event like this? And looking back on that event, I mean, not only did I meet people like my book agent and other people who have done all sorts of business with, but I learned things at that event that I'm still applying today that are worth way more than $10,000. And so these two author groups that I'm in, they don't cost anything. Each person pays their share of the expenses, but I'm not sure what I would pay, but I would pay a lot of money for it.

And so, this idea of always investing in and developing your education, building your network, putting yourself in rooms where you're not the most successful person, you're not the most informed person where there's something for you to learn is really, really important. And it's a deeply stoic idea. Marcus Realis was famous well into his philosophy career for still attending the lectures of sexists, for still corresponding with his tutors and his teachers.

Hadrian traveled the Roman Empire, stopping in at different philosophy classes, having dinners and meetings with different philosophers. Kato, every night, would have dinner with philosophers, sisterhood, and the same thing. They wanted to be around wise people who made them better. Epictetus talks about how if you brush shoulders with someone covered in mud, you'll get dirty. And I think he's talking about bad influences, but I also think the same logic holds true for good influences. Who are

you surrounding yourself with? Who are you exposing yourself to? Who are you rubbing shoulders with? And how is that making you better? Going to these groups has been deeply educational for me. It's been humbling for me. It's been challenging for me. It's forced me to take my sort of solitary profession, which is sort of writing and these emails and these podcasts and the stuff we do is a little bit more solitary by its very nature. It's forced me to think about it more as sort of a cohort or as more of a team sport or more as the sort of project that we're engaged in together. And so when I find something I really like that's really been good for me.

I want to share it. I want, you know, sort of past that for it. And so I would urge people to set up something like this in their own career, find meetings like this where opportunities to engage with people who are doing the same work as you, people who you are aspiring to be like, people who you, who are aspiring to be like, you are, and sort of engaging in this sort of learning process because I think it's just one of the single best things you can do at your time, and I think at the core of it is a deeply philosophical practice. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, the Saturday edition.

I was recording the intro. You just listened to about my trip to Nashville a couple of weeks ago. And I thought Chris Gillabo, who's our guest today, was going to be able to fly out after we're going to do a whole interview about it. We're going to sit in person. We're going to do YouTube. But as the Stoic say, life has a way of just sort of dashing our plans totally to pieces. So we had to make it work. And then on top of that, we had some technical difficulties in between, which we ended up having to record separately and then send each other the files.

So if this sounds a little different, that's why. But Chris Gilibot's awesome, super nice guy, two sort of connections between him and my work. He actually was one of the first and nicest people to blurb the obstacles the way. And I think it had a big impact on the book. So I'm happy to talk about his work because he's been so good and nice to me. And then when I was writing stillness, I was sort of workshopping some of the ideas, and he had me out to Portland for his World Domination Summit, where I workshop some of the material. So you can actually see it at a talk of that, if you Google Ryan Holiday World Domination

Summit. You can see my talk there, and you can see how some of the ideas sort of connected into what became still. This is the key, and you can also see sort of some of the ideas that are actually in the sort of conclusion of that book, where I'm sort of wrestling with those ideas. All of that is there. And now actually there's a third thing. Chris and I have the same editor, Nikki Poppedopolis at Portfolio edited.

Chris's new book, The Money Tree Story about finding the fortune in your own fact yard, which you can check out on Amazon, Audible, everywhere. Big fan of Chris's stuff, not only is it a great person and a fan of Stoicism, but he's a great writer. And as we talk about in the interview, this book is interesting because it's sort of a fable. You can see described it's sort of prescriptive fiction that sort of teaches how to make the most of adversity and then also how to sort of control one's own destiny or direct the course of their own life, both entrepreneurial, financially, sort of mindset-wise. So Chris is awesome.

I'm really glad I got to talk to him. You can listen to the interview now, and then I will see you next week. Thanks for everything. I hope everyone is staying safe and most importantly, staying inside your house, wherever you happen to be in the US or wherever you happen to be in the world, everyone can have a big impact on this pandemic by staying home, not going anywhere. That's why Chris is canceling his book tour

as we talked about doing interviews and that's why you, as much as you possibly can, stay inside, don't see people be safe and help flatten the curve as they're calling it. So, I hope you like the interview. I'll talk to you soon. I'm gonna read really fast. The April 4th entry in the Daily Stoic, you can get this book on Audible. Don't let this go to your head. Make sure you're not made emperor. Avoid that imperial stain. It can happen to you. So keep yourself simple, good, pure, saintly, plain, a friend of justice, God fear, and gracious

affectionate, and strong for your proper work. Fight to remain the person that philosophy wish to make you, revere the gods, and look after each other. Life is short. The fruit of this life is good character and acts for the common good. That's Marcus Aurelius' Meditations 630. It's difficult to even conceive of what life must have been like for Marcus Aurelius. He wasn't born in Emperor Norton. He obtained the position deliberately. It was simply thrust upon him. Nevertheless, he was suddenly the richest man in the world, head of the most powerful, R.V.U.R.E.R.

ruling over the largest empire in history, considered a God amongst men. It's no wonder that he wrote little messages like this one to remind himself not to spin off the planet. Without them, he might have lost his sense of what was important, falling prey to the lies from off the planet. Without them, he might have lost his sense of what was important, falling prey to the lies from all the people who needed things from him. And here we are, whatever we happen to be doing at risk of spinning off ourselves. When we experience success, we must make sure

that it doesn't change us, that we continue to maintain our character despite the temptation not to. reason must lead the way, no matter what good fortune comes along. I just love this passage from Marcus Realis because, you know, we have that idea that absolute power corrupts absolutely, but Marcus is the exception to that and how did he do it? You know, how did he pull it off?

It's just, it's really incredible. His desire, as he said, to escape being made emperor to escape imperialization, the stain of the purple quote. This was not an easy task. He worked at this, just like we have to work, not to let being a parent go to our heads, not to let being an influencer go to our heads, not to let being a millionaire go to our heads, not to let, you know, be an a millionaire, go to our heads,

not to let being, you know, named assistant manager of the McDonald's you work at, go to your head. We can't let these things change. Just we have to stay who we are. We have to stay good. We have to stay, as Barkas said, good, pure, saintly, played,

a friend of justice, God fear, a gracious, affectionate, headstrong for your proper work. We have to fight to remain the person that philosophy wishes us to be. So I hope you guys keep fighting. Thanks for listening. We'll talk soon. Raising kids can be one of the greatest rewards of a parent's life. But come on, someday's parenting is unbearable.

I love my kid, but is a new parenting podcast from Wondry that shares a refreshingly honest and insightful take on parenting. Hosted by myself, Megan Galey, Chris Garcia, and Kurt Brown-Oller, we will be your resident not-so-expert-experts. Each week we'll share a parenting story that'll have you laughing, nodding, and thinking. Oh yeah, I have absolutely been there. We'll talk about what went right and wrong.

What would we do differently? And the next time you step on yet another stray Lego in the middle of the night, you'll feel less alone. So if you like to laugh with us as we talk about the hardest job in the world, listen to, I love my kid, but wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad free on the Amazon music or Wondery app. Hey Chris, how are you? How great, Ryan. How are you? I'm pretty good. I'm pretty good.

So I was talking about this in the intro, because I recorded the intro a couple of weeks ago, right after we got back from Nashville, and I was talking about how, sort of why I like groups like the one we were just in. I guess you can call them sort of a mastermind, but it's like where a bunch of people get together and they share ideas even though ostensibly they are competitors, they're sharing and sort of we're all helping each other. But I don't think either of us thought that we would go home

and not leave our houses for what's now almost a month and they were announcing yesterday, it might be a month longer, how are you doing? You know, that was such a strange, such strange timing, you know, for to it is in some way at least for our meeting, but then of course, going back to that situation. I think I'm doing okay. I still don't know what to think about all of it,

but I'm just trying to practice some of the principles you teach and thinking a lot about, what's within my control, et cetera, and how can I spend this time, productively, how can I make something, contribute something that's helpful since I can't do anything on the healthcare side of things. All I can do is try to be safe, keep other people safe,

but then also like, okay, what can I make, and how can I find the opportunity in this time of uncertainty? Well, that's what I was gonna ask you about, because we're gonna talk about the Monetary, which is your new book. But first, I thought we could sort of go behind the curtain a little bit and talk about what it's like to put out a book when a certain sort of weeks before you're about to do that

the entire world basically comes to a complete standstill. So walk us through what happened. You had a very expensive book tour plan. You had dates all over the country. I'm sure you had tons of media planned. So what happened and then how are you thinking about that? Sure. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, great timing there. I was hoping to do a 40 city book tour had just about everything booked, at least probably the first 30 or so,

you know, plane tickets, hotels, venues, you know, all that kind of stuff. And then, you know, as it got closer and closer, it just kind of became a parent that the best case scenario would be to do it kind of piecemeal and like, okay, some events are canceled, but some continue, but there's going to be low attendance, et cetera. And so that didn't make sense. It was just like we need to just change the whole thing, basically. So I was sad about it, of course, because I really liked the tour. I haven't done a pretty big one in a while, and was looking forward to going to meet readers

and listeners, and I try to create a whole community experience at all the events. But you got to work with what you got basically. And so after like that same day that I started thinking about what else can I do and how can I reframe this for myself, what is it within my control. And the thing I started thinking about on that behind the scenes topic was, well, you know, the tour takes a lot of time. And if every event is like three hours or so in the evening plus all the different transit and such, like checking in and out of a different hotel every night, like even though I'm fairly efficient and

I try to work on the go, that's still a lot of time. What if I spent the same amount of time, basically just connecting with people and doing live streaming and otherwise just doing whatever I can, you know, for the months of April and May, because I really do want to get the message of this book out to people. And so that's how I've kind of reframed it. And I actually do see this kind of an exciting opportunity

in that way. Yeah, it's interesting. Like I'm sure you thought about things that could go wrong for the tour, like the Stoic has idea of pre-meditatio malorum, you know, like sort of meditating on what can go wrong. And obviously, like, I think about that, I think, you know, I thought I had a whole bunch of,

you know, I'd probably $200,000 worth of business scheduled through the rest of the year that evaporated. It's like every day I'm waking up to have news that more of it has gone away. And so I certainly thought about a scenario in which some of that could happen, but what I think is interesting is that I had no conception that all of it could happen. And other, you know, like it's like we can we plan for a worst case scenario, but but life sort of humbles us with a worst case scenario that's even worse than the worst case scenario. Yeah, it's a worst case scenario times 10, you know, we for WDS also like

role domination summit the event that I I produce every summer, which you were very kind of speak at either last year or the year before, I believe. For that, we always do a pre-mortem, basically, a very similar kind of thing, like a month out. We're like, we kind of list, we get in a conference room and we list everything up on the board and such. And this is something that we just, I mean, nobody saw this coming. And if we ever think there's a bit of like a disaster or something, you think of it being local, right? You think of it like, okay, some, really bad, it's going to happen in Portland or in Austin or wherever, but you don't think like the whole world,

it's going to be on lockdown. So that's why it is, that's why it is both tragic and yet also whenever there's progress, there are always people that are harmed, so that the contrast has to be true as well, whenever there's disruption, there also has to be some way to move forward positively. Sure.

Yeah, it's funny too, because so Santa Cahd the one who has this idea of the pre-meditation moron, and we have this quote on the coin that we sell, it says like, war, torture, shipwreck, like all the, this is all the things that could happen should be

like on your mind, right? And yet what he never saw coming was like basically being executed by the emperor. So even the guy writing this is still caught off guard by life. So I think that's something I've been thinking about. I wonder if you've been thinking about it. It's like also just being a little forgiving of myself, you know, like when I look at my stock market portfolio, or when I look at decisions I made, I'm like, how did I not, and it's like, oh wait, okay. I saw I'm in a better position than most people

because I made those decisions. I didn't have 100% of my eggs in one basket, but like we still, and Seneca talks about this too, is this sort of fortune access she pleases. In a way, we should be sort of humbled by this and go like, okay, even the best laid plans, you're still gonna get some of it wrong and you gotta be okay with that.

Right, and because there's no alternative, I mean, normally in these situations, well, not these situations, but normally in any situation, your alternative is to try to fight it, which doesn't always work out so well. But in this case, there's really no fighting you can do. Like you have to either accept it

or just kind of be miserable and keep looking at the news every hour, which is, you know, like going to make you more unhappy and such. I think one thing that's interesting is that, that we're all in this together. You know what I mean? Like, I such. I think one thing that's interesting is that that we're all in this together. You know what I mean? Like I think that is what one thing that is different

and it's not just like my own stock portfolio crashed or something, it's less like everybody is kind of experiencing the same sort of things in different and unique ways of course, but there are some commonalities there and a lot of people that are seeking connection and community, and you've got a whole wave of people that are learning to work remotely

that have never done so before, including some that I've heard from that are like, I've been asking my boss for years, if I could work from home, and if I said no. Right, like here's your chance, basically. So I think there's a lot of shifting that's gonna take place. A lot of changes coming out of it.

How have you, because I can imagine one sort of reaction to what you're going through, it would be sort of frustration, it would be anger, it might be resentment, or just like some depression about it, right? You're like, you put it all this time, all this work, and then life just sort of dashed that to pieces. How are you sort of dashed that to pieces. How are you sort of waking up, keeping yourself going? No.

You know what I mean? Like how are you not just saying, fuck it, and how have you worked on that? You know, I don't know that it's so much working on this situation now. I think probably for the past two to three years, you know, I've been working on radical acceptance and doing some exposure therapy and just like learning to accept things the way they are and not the way I want them to be. And that has been, that's a scary process, I think.

But once you do it, you realize it's actually much better to do it that way than to just, as I said, fight reality, wish that things were different, etc. So I think a lot of it is kind of in the work that I've done leading up to this. And, you know, since there isn't anything we can do about it, for me, like I said, I've been trying to focus on the reframing, and okay, I can't do this, so therefore there's something else. And I think that's probably true for most people.

Like some people might have a hard time applying it in the same way, like if you're not doing like digital work, if you don't have something, like a message you're trying to get out or something, but there has to be some way to to flip it, there has to be some way to reframe or or maybe even just lead you into something totally different. And if you don't find that, then I think, or if you don't search for that, let's say, it's not about the finding, it's the searching. If you don't actively search for that, then I think that is a process that leads to depression. Well, I wondered, because you and I have run a couple times, and I know you're along this in Stranger, and I saw that thing you posted on Instagram the other day where you'd sort

of, you'd worked out basically every day for 365 days in a row. I wondered part of what running teaches you and the active practice of it, and I think why there is this kind of connection between stoicism and athletics and running and working out in philosophy is that it is training the mind for the other kinds of adversity we find ourselves in, which is like, this might suffer a month, this might suffer six months, it might suffer six years, but really the only solution is just like you keep pushing. Yeah, I think the endurance factor is key. In December and January, I did a running program that ended up being more miles than I've ever done.

It was really good for me. It was a challenge, but really good. And so I've been off that since then, like I'm still running, but just not as much. And what I noticed was, I was worried partly about being bored by running so much and I kind of got into it after a while and I thought it was this long meditative thing. But what's interesting is like coming off it like in the February and March and since it's like,

now I go out to run like three or four miles and I'm bored. I'm like, is this almost over? And I'm like, wow, you lose that. If you don't actually keep that practice of endurance, it actually goes away. You know that your fitness level is the thing you have to maintain, but I don't think I realized that this mental part of it was also something that has to be practiced, or at least it has to be experienced on a regular basis, or else you go back to that

that place of kind of pushing or resisting. Yeah, and I think that's like an important thing for, I posted something like this in Daily Stoke Life, which is our member thing. I was like, this is what we train for. Like this is the whole point of the philosophy is when things go upside down. And so I feel like that's sort of what you're going

through more specifically with this launch, but also just what everyone is going through. It's like, this is what living through history is like. Like it's not always fun and sometimes it's terrifying and sometimes it really sucks. The thing is everyone's going to be able to look back, whatever this is over, as you said, whatever the timing is, and everyone's going to remember it.

And everyone's going to remember what they did during this time. I think they're going to have some sharp memories, like a very clear, you have these different things throughout your life. And so some of those memories are obviously influenced by the external events. And for me, the question is, OK, again, what is within my control?

What are the memories that I want to have that I actually create? And I want to be able to look back and just, I mean, obviously this is just me, but I want to look back and say, I had this project I was really excited about and I had to change all the plans, you know, two weeks out essentially, but I'm really happy with what I did.

And I'm really happy with how I made that shift. And it's not so much like what the outcome is. It's not like, oh, and then that led to it being a huge success or not. It's, you know,, and then that led to it being a huge success or not. It's, you know, was I able to do that and did that? Did I do that to the best of my ability? So I think there's something there that everybody can apply in their own way. You're going to have those sharp memories, just very clear of this time.

What are the ones that you want to have? No, I think that's right. And one of the reasons I'm, and I think I sent this to you, but I'm not that concerned with how the money tree is going to be affected by this, which is your new book. It is because I, like, and this is one of the things we want to do philosophically, is zoom out a little bit, right? So I remember when I was writing for any of seller, Robert Green was talking to me about how his book, The Art of Seduction, came out like the week after 9-11.

You know, in his sense, soul, let's call it a million copies. Neil Strauss is telling me the game came out. And he had like the best week of media planned that he'd ever gotten in his career. And then Hurricane Katrina hit. And there's a Michael Lewis book that came out right after the tech bubble burst. The reality is when you zoom out, you go, hey, I actually don't remember what was happening in the world when most of my favorite books came out. Nobody remembers where the great Gatsby hit on the bestseller list or in your case, your book's sort of this really interesting fable,

you know, I don't even know what year whom of my cheese came out or what year the energy bus came out or, you know, rich dad port ad, they may well have come out in worse periods than this one as far as publishing goes. I think what matters is, as you said, like, do you keep going? Like, do you let that thing determine, actually, what you could do right now is give up on the book, and that would have a large impact on whether it sells or not, or you could decide, hey, this is going to be sort of a blip on a longer, you know, a longer radar. And that's weirdly kind of a similar response to how we should be thinking about things

like a stock market portfolio, which is that when you zoom out, what matters is the upward trajectory, not what it's doing week to week. Right, and what matters is your commitment, like your strategy, are you in it for the long term, or are you trying to time it? And I think, I learned a long time ago, I can, in business and book publishing

or whatever else, trying to time things is usually a mistake. You know, like, you might get it right once in a while and then you think you're a genius, but the next time you're gonna get it wrong. And it much better to just, you know, the perennial seller is a model that I try to follow. And I wanna make something that is going to be helpful to people in a, you know, just a very real

emotional and practical way for years to come. So that's the goal anyway. Well, I do think what's interesting is, as you said, just when things go great, some people are doing poorly and when things go poorly, some people are doing great. With the irony here in a cosmic sense is that as much as this book is affected by the short-term shift in what's happening, I got to feel like there is going to be a rush of people to whom the $100 start up, the side hustle stuff you've written about in your side hustle podcast. Both of those things both become, are now almost perfectly timed for where people are, which is stuck in their house, trying to figure out how to use this time, suddenly strap for resources

and trying to make ends meet. I think that's the other benefit of having a diverse portfolio of projects and portfolio of skills is that when one goes up the other might go down and vice versa. Yeah, I mean, that's my hope as well. And there's a lot of people out there, as you said that are navigating difficult decisions, trying to figure out how they can make extra money

or trying to figure out how they can make any money at all for those who are out of work. So I mean, I certainly wanna do whatever I can to support them. And I haven't had the experience of being unemployed. I've never actually really been employed. I've always worked for myself, you know, for better or worse, right?

That's like something to be proud of. But I do know something about this. I do know something about navigating the sense of creating an income generating project for the first time. And how do you do that on a really practical level without going into debt, and by using a skill you already have. And so, you know, the more people that can hear about that, then the better.

Well, so let's talk about the new book briefly, because this podcast is short like yours. We're not doing it, Joe Rogan, think here. But I love a couple of things about this book. One, it's a radically different book than all your other ones. This is fiction, or I guess it's more of a fable or a parable. I love that you challenge yourself as a writer by doing a dramatically different book. Like, I think that people don't do that enough. The other thing I really like about it is that

it's a fable and a story because I think that's often the best way to teach. I think there's a reason that Jesus speaks in parables. I think that most, there's a reason that ASOPs fables remain true. I think there's a reason that some of the other books we're talking about, whether it's John Gordon's stuff or or some of the other, a bunch of the best selling business books of all time are not, here's how to do this. It's, let me impart to you a philosophy through story. So why did you decide to do that? And then maybe let's sort of talk through

the broad strokes of the story and what it offers people. Yeah, I think it's something that was on my mind for a while, and it was one of those things where, like I have this belief about, you know, wild ideas or crazy ideas, in the sense that like all of us have all sorts of random ideas all the time. And sometimes you have bad ideas, like there is such a thing as a bad idea, right? But if you have this idea that keeps coming up like over and over, then there is something to it, you know, like there's some some reason why that that is there. And so in my case, I kept thinking

about, you know, just just this idea of a story, and I just had the broad strokes of it, and I had never written fiction before, so I didn't know a whole lot about plotting and character development and all of that. And so I did some reading, and I started outlining. I worked on it for maybe three months of just like outlining, maybe like 30 minutes a day,

and just thinking through different scenes and such. And then I wrote the whole book, or at least the first couple of drafts without, you know, saying anything about it to anybody to my agent or my editor or anything, just because I wanted to see if I could do it, you know, to see if I could do something that I actually was proud of,

which is different as you know, for nonfiction publishing, we usually write like a pitch or proposal essentially, and then you saw the book and you go and write the book, but I wanted to do that. So it's something that I don't want to say just came to me because there was a lot of work involved with it. But since I knew what I wanted to do

after that period of outlining, then it was relatively easy because it was just like, okay, I know what I wanted to communicate, then it's a question now of how to communicate it. And I wanted to try to make it, like it is technically a fable in the sense that it's prescriptive fiction, I guess you could call it,

but I really wanted to just be a story. Like I want people to actually read it who don't even care about entrepreneurship and they can enjoy the story and how the character overcomes obstacles and such. And hopefully go away having learned something but without necessarily thinking about it all the time. You know, like I don't have like at the end of each chapter chapter like, hey, here are the three things I told you in the chapter

and I'm going to tell you them three more times just to make sure you got it. You know, like the idea is to actually be an engaging story throughout. Yeah, it has to be, it has to be subtle and I think that's the, that, for instance, that's the genius of something like a subsfables is that to a kid, these are just weird stories about foxes and bears and lions. And it's only afterwards that you realize, oh, these are teaching lessons. And then those lessons sort of stick in your head in a weird way. Like I've got a three-year-old right now and we're sort of just going through a lot of those fables and it's like he wants to talk for instance about the Fox with no tail. He has no idea what this story is about but he the idea of a so I think I think that's that's interesting it's an interesting medium and I imagine a very

challenging one given that in your other books you could just say what you thought You didn't have to subsume it into events or into what, you know, a character is, you could just be you as Chris saying, here's what I think. I think there are a lot of different directions you can go with it. This is something that my agent talked to me about once I was, you know, in the midst of it. He's like with fiction. There's so many different ways you could do the, you know, the same thing. Like, you have a goal. There's a lot of different ways to accomplish it. Whereas with nonfiction, it's a lot more straightforward. I mean, it's not that there's no creativity in writing a how-to book, because there is,

but there is kind of a path that you follow when you're writing. Sure. The nonfiction. And with fiction, you can go this direction, you can go this one. So there's a lot more choice involved, and know, not one necessarily right way to do it, but hopefully, you know, when you actually do it, then you come to one way that is right. You know, one way that is right, a good way that is right,

something that you feel kind of wraps things up in a believable way and just leaves the reader feeling something. I think that's always the goal. It's like I want the reader to feel something, you know, after having read the book or even part of the book. Yeah, I'm curious too, as someone who has taken risks in your career and I think this one was probably a risk or it felt like a risk.

Sure. There's sort of this tension, right? Like, it's crazy to think that you could write a book and both of us at one point or another had not done a book before. So when we decided that we, there was, there's like kind of an insanity, but there's also like, if it really is insane,

like there's some ego, I guess, in saying like, I can write a novel or I can write a story or I can write a book or, and yet, because you've never done it before. But yet, if you're, if there's too much ego or if you truly are doing it out of ego, you won't do what you're talking about doing with this book, which is painstakingly go through the drafts, take advice, it's almost like you have to ignore the call several times,

and then only when it's persistent, really listen and then do it right. I'm just curious, how did you walk yourself through this process which must have been scary and your compass must have been a little screwed up? How did you get to the finished book? Well Ryan, it was part of it was scary, but a lot of it was exciting. A lot of it was fun, I have to say. Once I kind of knew more or less what I was doing and then it was about the development of it and such, I actually really looked forward to working on it. Now, I will say as well, like you're trying to about the editing and the drafts and such. I mean, that's where the majority of the work is, right? So for this book, I think I did six or seven full drafts, which I don't normally do, normally

I'm like three or four, maybe. And I did have, you know, have various critiques. It took from my agent and from my editors, the same as your editor now. And, but it was fun. I don't know, I really enjoyed it. So it was like, it was scary, but also exciting. And I think that's the combination you need to look for in a creative project. You know, you need to be intimidated by something

in a good way in a way that's like, whoa, that's big. You know, whatever that is for you. But it's the kind of thing that you're drawn to. And you can imagine, okay, if I can get over the, whatever is holding me back from this, you know, whether it's fear or something else, and if I can actually dive into it, you know, how will it feel to come to the other side,

or even how will it feel to immerse myself in it? And I'm really glad I did. It is a risk, like you said, it's a creative risk in some ways, a business risk, but honestly, I can say truly like apart from whatever the outcome is. You know, if it sells a lot of copies, that's wonderful. If it doesn't, you know, I'll be disappointed in that,

but I'm still glad that I've done it. Like I'm still proud of the work itself. Sure. Right. And that is, to me, the most, the thing the Stokes can teach us most about projects is like, all we control is what went in it and the joy of it and the work of it and the challenge of it.

And then we have to somewhat detach from the results for precisely the situation that you're in right now, which is that a global pandemic can melt down society like days before it comes out. And you have to be able to sort of go, hey, I've won most of what there is to win on this project by nature, the fact that like it physically exists. And then the, how many copies it sells, how many people it reaches, the impact that it has. It's not that that doesn't matter,

but it can't be everything because it is the part you control the least. Yeah, and I have to say that I've come a long way in this, like I just wanna be clear that I didn't always have this perspective. I mean, there are things that you know intellectually and then, but you don't have the emotional connection with it.

And so probably, you know, from my first book, I was saying things like, oh, it doesn't matter, you know, what happens, et cetera. But I was actually really attached, you know, to the outcome, you know, from my first book, I was saying things like, oh, it doesn't matter, you know, what happens, et cetera. But I was actually really attached, you know, to the outcome, you know, I really was attached. I mean, it was like, I think it was like my third book that, you know, for whatever reason, I really was like, I want this to be the, you know, a best seller and bigger than the last one. And it wasn't, and I felt just really, really disappointed. And that was a good lesson for me, basically, in going forward. And like, well, you know, there are lots

of elements that you can't control and, and was I proud of the book as a book itself or was I just proud of the book as like, this is my marketing tool to help me achieve this goal of my platform or, you know, something else that shares really disconnected from the creative process. So it's something that I've had to to evolve in. Yeah, I think from my first book, I was saying the same things and I was probably 10% focused on the process, 90% on the results.

And I'd like to think I got to a place on stillness where that's closer to being reversed. I'm not sure it totally is there. And I'm not sure from a business perspective how close you actually want to get. Do you want to be like, you know, you can't be completely indifferent to the results because that you won't get to publish anymore if you don't, but you want to get closer. So, so to wrap up, walk us through why this book was so important and to you to do. And what do you feel like? What are you hoping to teach people through it? Or I guess what can people learn and why is that? To me, it seems like a message well suited. The subtitle is a story about finding the fortune in your own backyard. Given that a lot of people can't

do anything but look around their own backyard right now. You know, sort of, well, why should they pick up this book? Yeah, I should have like a different edition finding the fortune in your studio apartment, you know, for New York or whatever. Totally. So I started with the character. I started with like this idea in my mind of this guy named Jake and he's a millennial

and he has a good job, but even though he has a good job, he also has a lot of debt. He has a lot of student loan debt, which of course is very common. And these debt payments are starting to come due, and it really affects every part of his life. It affects his professional life, it affects his relationship, and he realizes that to get out of this problem, he can't just work harder. He's already got the good or decent job. He can't just drive for Uber and

Lyft, like that's not really going to help. And so at first he's feeling kind of down about it and he ends up going to this group called the third way, which consists of people who are creating these new income streams and side hustles and so on. And they're all doing it on a budget without going into debt. And so he kind of meets a figure there who ends up talking with him, giving him a challenge to make $1,000 in the next week. And at first he's like, well, how do I do that? If I knew how to do that, I wouldn't be in this problem. But he kind of figures it out from there.

And then essentially, the book is his journey of how do I go from this situation of despair to one of hope. And inevitably it's filled with setbacks and advances and all that kind of stuff. But my hope is that a reader can identify with him and other characters in the book. There's also a whole second thread, a whole second story within the book about a ridiculous start-up. And so I'm trying to contrast like different business models. Like here is a model of a startup that has a lot of investor money. And here is Jake who doesn't have any money, he doesn't have investors,

but he's just kind of scrappily moving forward and trying to figure out something out for himself. So my hope is that readers will be like, I can do that too. Or if he was able to do that, then maybe there's something I can do. And here's the idea that I'm going to take based on this particular chapter or scene or experience. I love it. For people who like Chris' stuff, I strongly recommend the new book, The Money Tree,

but I also love Side Hustle, The $100 Startup, The Happiness of Pursuit, Born for this, The Art of Non-Conity. So how many books have you done? Is this seven or this is number seven? So I was going to say I'm trying to catch up to you, but that'll probably never happen. Yeah, I'm I'm I actually have sometimes people ask me and I have trouble. I have to like count exactly how many have been released versus how many are done. But no, you have quite a you have quite a catalog. And then every, for people who are listening to this, who like daily podcasts, who listen everything every day, you have a side hustle school, which is a daily podcast about a lot of the same themes in the book,

which is basically like, how do you sort of control your own destiny? How do you start small, build something, and create that autonomy. You don't have to raise hundreds of millions of venture capital and start the next Facebook to be an entrepreneur. There are plenty of people who are doing this on a small scale and you can grow and build something and then get closer to the life you want. Yeah, small but meaningful.

Small but meaningful and not everything has to scale. You know, the side hustle school podcast, as you said, it's like this daily case study model where for three years, I'm not doing question and answer with it, but for the first three years every day it was a different story. A different story of somebody out there and this is like a true story. So somebody who has a job, lots of responsibilities, but finds a way to create this additional source of income. So just kind of deconstructing it and how do they do it

and what went wrong and what worked and how did it affect their life in the end. Well, awesome. It was a pleasure to chat. I wish we could have done it in person. We'll do it in person when you finally do get your book to our back-on-track. And I'll see you soon. Thank you. I look forward to it. Cheers, man.

Hi, thanks cheers man. Hi, thanks man. Don't forget to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes or your favorite podcast app. And if you don't get the daily stoke email, go to dailystoke.com slash email. Hey, prime members, you can listen to the daily stoke early and ad free on Amazon music. Download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and ad-free with Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts.