The Daily Stoic - Brad Stone on the Rise of Amazon and Leading With Empathy

Episode Date: July 10, 2021

On today’s episode, Ryan talks to journalist and author Brad Stone about his new book Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire, the future implications of technology guided business practices, the moral tension that arises in the midst of large scale business growth, and more. Brad Stone is the author of four books, including 2014’s The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon. He was previously a San Francisco-based correspondent for The New York Times and Newsweek. A graduate of Columbia University, he is originally from Cleveland, Ohio and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and three daughters.Beekeeper’s Naturals is the company that’s reinventing your medicine with clean, effective products that actually work. Beekeepers Naturals has great products like Propolis Spray and B.LXR. Visit beekeepersnaturals.com/STOIC or enter code “STOIC” to get 20% off your first order.DECKED truck bed tool boxes and cargo van storage systems revolutionize organization with a heavy-duty in-vehicle storage system featuring slide out toolboxes. DECKED makes organizing, accessing, protecting, and securing everything you need so much easier. Get your DECKED Drawer System at Decked.com/STOIC and get free shipping.Athletic Greens is a custom formulation of 75 vitamins, minerals, and other whole-food sourced ingredients that make it easier for you to maintain nutrition in just a single scoop. Visit athleticgreens.com/stoic to get a FREE year supply of Liquid Vitamin D + 5 FREE Travel Packs with subscription. LinkedIn Jobs is the best platform for finding the right candidate to join your business this fall. It’s the largest marketplace for job seekers in the world, and it has great search features so that you can find candidates with any hard or soft skills that you need. And now, you can post a job for free. Just visit linkedin.com/STOIC to post a job for free. Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and FacebookFollow Brad Stone: Homepage, Twitter, Instagram, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoke podcast early and add free on Amazon music download the app today Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoke each weekday We bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics Something to help you live up to those four Stoke virtues of courage justice up to those four stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview stoic philosophers. We explore at length how these stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time.

Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal, and most importantly to prepare for what the week ahead may bring. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wundery's podcast business wars. And in our new season, Walmart must fight off target, the new discounter that's both savvy and fashion forward. Listen to business wars on Amazon music or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoke Podcast. I was thinking about this the other day. I bought my first copy of Marcus Realis' Meditations on Amazon in the fall of 2006. I pulled up the receipt not that long ago, but I remember the other two books. I bought a book called Sex on the Brain, which is about the relationship between Sex and Gender, and a book called The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris, which remains one of my absolute favorite books. But I think about how lucky I was, not just that I lived in a country where I could buy a book on demand over the internet or that I could afford to do so, but I had been recommended Marcus Realius' Meditations, and so I typed it in on Amazon. For whatever reason, the one I bought, the Gregory Hayes translation for the modern library,

which we sell in the painted porch, which you can check out in the show notes here. For whatever reason, Amazon's algorithm surfaced the right translation for me at the time, they didn't value some, you know, chinsy or cheap, rip off translation or, you know, whatever, that the algorithm in that moment gave me exactly what I needed. That book came two days later, changed my life completely. We wouldn't be talking here

if that connection hadn't been made. And yes, is there something special about bookstores? Of course, I own a bookstore. I think that there is or something about browsing a bookstore. There's something about editorial curation. At the same time, this worked too, right? It gave me exactly what I needed when I needed it. And perhaps someone who's listening to me now,

maybe you heard about this podcast because it was recommended by Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Or you randomly were suggested one of our YouTube videos or you came across an article from a Google search or maybe my book was surfaced to you on Amazon. The point is there's so much randomness and luck out there. I do feel like it was faded for me to be introduced to the Stoics. I feel grateful and blessed.

And at the same time, I understand that these algorithms as complicated as they are, and I talk about this in today's episode, as destructive as they can be, they are also feats of human brilliance and innovation. And they've done lots and lots of good. Have they contributed to political polarization? Yes, have they ended in the elimination of jobs that were previously done by experts or people would taste? Yes, that's problematic, sure.

But there's also been a whole bunch of things that were not possible without them. In fact, my book, The Ops School is the way, part of the reason it succeeded that when it came out on Amazon about a couple months into it, my publisher did a discount promotion and it discounted the book as an ebook from like $9.99 or $1.99 to like $3.99. Sales spiked up and then Amazon's algorithm said, oh wow, when this book is cheaper, it sells more copies. And then in response to that, Amazon kept the price artificially low for something like 11 months. And if you look at the sales track record of the Ops goes the way, that was instrumental in the introduction

of that book to a wide audience. So again, we might not be talking. I might not have the career I have as an author. Stoicism might not have reached the millions of people that it's reached here in the 21st century if it were not for the power of that algorithm. So I just think that's something that's strange and weird and fascinating and that leads me to today's guest, the author Brad Stone, the author of the everything store story, his first book about Amazon, and then he's now the author of this new book, Amazon Unbound, Jeff Bezos in the invention of a global empire. When he wrote the everything's story, Amazon was a bookstore and many other things, but really became the

behemoth that it became in the years after that book. And so he got a chance to tackle Amazon Web Services, all the things that Jeff Bezos has done since, including its incredible performance and sort of aggressive expansion during the pandemic. Brad is a senior executive editor at Bloomberg News. As I said, his first book, The Everything Story, Jeff Bezos in the age of Amazon, is a New York Times

best seller, translated in more than 35 languages. His book, The Upstart's Uber Airbnb in the Battle for the New Silicon Valley is also wonderful. He's covered Silicon Valley for more than 25 years and he lives in the Bay Area. It's a fascinating book. It's a book, I believe we carry here at the Painted porch among others. I thought this was a great interview. I'm fascinated by it both from the industry side as a person who publishes books, as a person who sells books, as a person who has e-commerce, as a person who buys stuff on the internet and

need the things during the pandemic that I couldn't get in stores. This is just a conversation. I was really excited to have, if you haven't listened to my conversation with Tobias Lutke, the founder of Shopify, I think these two episodes go well together. But in the meantime, here is my interview with Brad Stone, author of Amazon Unbound and the Everything Store. Check out his books, check out this interview, and I'll talk to you soon. I think this is in your first book, but it's one of my favorite stories, so I thought we could start there because I think it goes to the essence of the brand and person you've been biograficizing or at least it's an internal question with them. You tell that story about Jeff Bezos and his grandfather and grandmother. She's smoking and he sort of does the math on what the cost of smoking is. And maybe you can tell the rest of the story and then we could sort of dissect it a little bit.

That's right. That's right. Yeah, I just pulled my copy of the Everything Store, my first book about Amazon and Jeff Bezos, which chronicles the early years, the company and the early years of his life. And yeah, Bezos' formative years were spent, well, with his family moving from city to city

because a stepfather was a petroleum engineer, but then over the summers with his grandparents who had a ranch in Southern Texas. And one of the things that they did was they would take campers out onto the road every couple of years and just drive with a bunch of other families. And he and Bezos at the time, you know, is this sort of mathematically oriented kid. And there's a public service announcement comes over the radio, and it's about smoking, and how many years off of your life it can take.

And apparently he does the math, and informs his grandmother who was a smoker, and who would later die of cancer, that she was taking a certain number of years off her life. And her grandfather, who was a NASA engineer, rocket engineer, who really inspired Bayes' host's love of space, stops the camper, brings him outside, and gives him a lecture.

And one of the lines of the lecture is it's harder to be clever. It's harder to be kind than clever, I think,'s the is the line and you know and Bayesos talked about that I believe it was in the in the in the in the The graduate the speech he gave at the graduation of Princeton and I remember Amazon employees Finding that interesting because Bayesos hadn't necessarily Spread them with kindness over the years so that he relayed that anecdote was interesting to them. Yeah, I'm fascinated by it for so many reasons. First off, because the distinction between clever

and kind and how it's easier to be one than the other is itself kind of a clever observation, which I like. And then it's also complicated because Bezos is totally right. His grandmother is doing a thing that is, you know, it's a hard truth, but it's a truth nevertheless. And then, yeah, as you said, he, I guess that would be my first question for you, which is, is he a kind person? Like, is that a word you would use to describe him

in his rise? Definitely not. It's not to say he's not kind, but that's not what he's optimized for in his professional life. He has been single-minded in kind of architecting systems for growth, systems for invention at Amazon, systems to get the best out of people, to be the most efficient, to push the boundaries of technology. And it's interesting, Ryan, we're talking now

at the very end of Bezos' 10-year CEO. And one of the last things that he did, one of the last things Amazon did, while Bezos was CEO, is they added two new leadership principles to those 14 kind of sacrosanct leadership principles. And one of the new additions was to be the Earth's best employer and to lead with empathy.

And they've just added that now 27 years into the founding of the company. And it tells you something, right? It tells you that maybe they've listened to the criticism that it has been an unkind place to work. Yeah, and you have some quips in both the books, like sort of things he famously says to people who are, like, why are you wasting my life?

Do you think I took my stupid pills today? I think that's one of the tensions that brilliant people and busy people and ambitious people have, which is that most people aren't up to your standards or level, and how do you balance the tension between getting the difficult things that you want to get accomplished with these quaint or, let's say, important notions of kindness and empathy and all of that. Yeah, and I should point out that the outward jibes,

that I kind of chronicle in the first book, the Everything Store, where Bezos who just hammer his employees with those one liners, that was very early Bezos. And he has evolved quite a bit since then. I don't think he would decimate anyone, at least at Amazon in the same way. I think he realized at a certain point

that his stature had grown, the company had grown. He professionalized. One of the big mysteries, even among the senior ranks at Amazon was whether Bezos had any sort of management, a management counselor. And that was a mystery I gave myself and was like a coach or something? Yeah, coach, right. And I was never able to figure that out.

But he did, his leadership style did evolve. And while I don't necessarily think that it became all that much more empathetic, he didn't, he wasn't known. And he could still be difficult at meetings. He didn't throw the kind of tantrums that I'm chronicling in the everything store in the early days of Amazon. And it's hard to give someone credit for sort of not being as bad as they're like could get away with being, but like I found that the sort of the few instances that you did detail, you know, that would have been like an

average Tuesday for Steve Jobs or or right or or you know, that would have been like an average Tuesday for Steve Jobs or, or, or, or, or, or, you know, even many different presidents over the years, like leaders are notoriously sort of short and blunt and, and years of Amazon's growth. And really the more, in some ways, the more exciting business story because it grows to a trillion dollar company, you see a different kind of Bezos leadership. And he walks out of some meetings, in particular during the development of Alexa, where he just feels like they haven't solved the data gathering challenge to make Alexa smart, or in these senior leadership meetings, what they call OP1 meetings, where he's just like a sharp shooter and the question he's asking one after another that exposes the underlying unprofitability of the retail business. I think, yeah, but I do think the leadership style evolved and it became less outwardly temperamental and more just precision

questioning and then using himself the questions he asked and the time he spent in meetings to send the same messages of either disappointment or a claim. Yeah, I remember reading once about church Hill that as he took some high position in British government, this is before his prime minister, the outgoing person gave him some advice and it said like, it helps to be a good butcher. And it strikes me that that's one of the realities of being a Jeff Bezos or any sort of leader, which is that what you're doing is inherently, you know, saying no or making decisions that have, you know, cost, benefit and that like, like, you know, the decision, you know, it's easy to be, you know, it's, it's better to be kind than clever or whatever.

It is true, except what if you're trying to take over a certain industry, like somebody is going to end up being the loser of that. So there's a violence is too strong a word, but there is kind to end up being the loser of that. So there's a violence is too strong a word, but there is kind of a mercilessness to capitalism that I suppose all practitioners inevitably have to absorb to some degree. That's really interesting. Well, first of all, I'm reading, I'm slowly making my way through the splendid and the vile. Yes, that's great. So, so all, I'm reading, I'm slowly making my way through this splendid and the vial. Yes. It's great. So, yeah, I'm a big fan of now reading more about the Churchill.

But I, it's funny that you mention, you know, the violence of capitalism, because I, I feel like we're at this really interesting stage with, with Amazon. It has now become the company that basically the mainstream media, the tech press, is it loves to scrutinize, a lot of criticism, the pendulum has swung, at least in the press, I think, towards more negativity around Amazon. And part of it fairly, and maybe part of it unfairly, the kind of is the world is sort of demanding that Amazon be nicer. And yet they've always been fighting, right? They've always viewed like their mission in life to grow, to expand, to gain market share, to satisfy customers, whatever the cost.

And so we're seeing this collision now in this kind of Amazon's existential reason for being. And it's the corporate values that Bezos set up early on. And now society's demands that this company operate a little bit differently. Yeah, what was that early project they had? It was like Project Gazelle or something like that. They wanted to feast on publishers, you know, on a, like a lion on a, on a, on a gazelle or something. There, that, that sort of does seem to encapsulate.

Cheetah. Cheetah. Cheetah. Yes. Yeah. Well, that was funny because that came up again. And one of the, that was an anecdote again from the everything store. And that anecdote came up in the testimony in the house to anti-trust subcommittee. And Bayesons was in the testimony in the House Sanctite Trust Subcommittee. And Bayeson was asked about it. This was last year when he was testifying virtually.

And of course, he said he didn't recall it. But yeah, there, yeah. And that goes back to the mid 2000s, when Amazon is struggling basically to survive, to create, to get its house in order so that it could begin investing and expanding in, again, into other market categories. And Bayzos orders a set of renegotiations

with the book publishers to more accurately reflect the value Amazon was bringing to them. And he brought a kind of ruthlessness to it. Yeah, as an author, I imagine you are of two minds, and every time I hear authors, I actually also own a small indie bookstore as well. So I've sort of seen it from all sides, but you hear from people in publishing

that really sort of hate Amazon, and sort of see it as this evil behemoth or whatever. And then I try to remember, it's like Amazon paid for my house, you know? Amazon is responsible, I think, for what like 80 or 90% of all book sales at this point when you take Kindle and audio, but then also most people buy online.

It's, I don't always get the hatred of it because I have experienced all sides of it. I'm not sure if as many people would have purchased my books, if Amazon hadn't made purchasing them both as easy as it is and also as affordable as it is. So that's a good thing. No doubt. And you think you're in a weird situation, vis-a-vis Amazon. I mean, I'm selling books about Amazon.

On Amazon. On Amazon. And by the way, in the bookstores, do not, at least anecdotally, I can report that they don't seem to be great fainting out. But neither of these books have been embraced by Amazon. And if you remember, Bezos didn't like the Everything Store.

Didn't his wife review it? Yeah, his wife gave me a one-star review. But I mean, it's all, you know, you know, the, the, the, the, there are a million little heartbreaks to, to book publishing. And one is, you know, walking proudly into a bookstore and not seeing your book anywhere or buried, you know, in the back. And I just think, yeah, it's, it's awkward, right? Because even though these are, I are, I'm trying to write nuanced

histories with the good and the bad, my sales are buying large on Amazon. Yeah, it's also weird too. I think it's very easy to talk about sort of kind clever. It's also easy to be sort of clip about things and not actually have any real basis in reality. Like, you know, people like, I'm boycotting Amazon, I only buy from from indie retailers or something, which of course, as the owner of an indie bookstore, I certainly appreciate.

But one of the things that you know, you learn when you get under the hood is like, um, well, where are the indie bookstores getting their books? Well, they're getting them from a distributor, right? Who in turn is a multi-billion dollar distributor named Ingram, who in turn is getting them from publishers who are, you know, multi-billion dollar companies. You can have this idea of like, oh, I'm buying from the little guy, but there really is no escaping the fact that there are several middlemen between you and the person who created the art or the product that you're buying.

And it's kind of like pick your poison. The idea that you can somehow be above it all is probably naive at best, totally untrue and impossible at worst. Right. In this new book, I was very interested, you know, I don't write a lot about the book publishing industry in Amazon Unbound, but I was very interested in the way in which Amazon views the its original business and how it sort of moved beyond it. I was giving a, I was giving a virtual presentation to the Association of American Publishers.

And I said, you guys are like the children from a previous marriage. Like, they're fond of you. But the attention's really on all the new kids right now. And that's Alexa and Hollywood and their transportation division. So it's funny, the book publishing industry still somewhat obsesses about Amazon, and I really do get the feeling that Amazon's kind of moved on. Oh, I think that's totally right. Yeah, I've served two experiences there. I did the marketing on a book by Tim Ferriss a few years ago that was published by Amazon. And I remember we went into it thinking, well, what's it going to be like having, you know, the biggest books during the world, also publishing your book? Obviously, Amazon is just going to turn the fire hose on

on this book, and then you realize like, oh, Amazon makes more money selling refrigerators than like the entire book publishing industry. This is such a low priority for them that it's almost insignificant to them. It's probably in some cases like more trouble than it's almost insignificant to them. It's probably in some cases like more trouble than it's worth. Yeah, it was a staging ground for,

it was this Normandy beach. But I have one anecdote in, and it was not unbound where Bezos is running through headcount and he's worried that the company is getting too big or too fat and that operating margins have decreased. And he comes upon a proposal for the book division and he says, like, why do we need any more people here? You know, when we've all heard it, we already dominated.

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Follow Spellcaster wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, prime members, you can listen to episodes Add Free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Yeah, it's it's strange and and and there is this jockeying right and I think I found there was an issue with a few of my books a couple years ago where somebody in like India or something was selling pirated copies of the of the books and was Amazon's copyright issue, which is more than just publishing. It's all throughout Amazon is third party sellers selling counterfeit or copyright infringing goods. And so somehow, like basically corrupted pirated stock sort of gets into the thing.

It has the buy button. It's this whole thing and it costs many, many thousands of copies and sales. And I remember talking to the publisher, I was like, who's gonna make me hold on this, like who's gonna fix this? And I remember them saying, we're talking to Amazon, but Amazon doesn't care.

And I was like, that's cool, but I'm talking to you. And they were like, what do you mean? And I was like, that's your problem. I was like, I sold my book to a multi-billion dollar company. So they would handle things like this. And they said something like, well, Amazon doesn't care about the little guy. And I remember thinking, like, fuck you,

you're not the little guy. You did like $30 billion in sales last year. But so I think it's interesting when we have these debates about is Amazon too big, is Amazon using its market power unfairly. It's not squeezing in necessarily on small, mom and pop businesses. The people that squeezing are the other large businesses and those companies are then crying foul as if they don't do the exact same thing to the people smaller. That's how the food chain works,

is I guess what I'm saying. Right. Yeah, but I mean, I think an element of the frustration from the publisher there is that Amazon can be such an apps and partner. So your publisher probably wanted to move quickly to get Amazon to boot out that that overseas counter-fitter. But they're just they're just not responsive. They've set up automated systems

and they can be very difficult to deal with. People probably are going to get tired if we just keep complaining about. But like one funny thing when Amazon Unbound was published, how many of these sort of algorithmically generated little paperbacks or Kindle books came out like summary and analysis of Amazon Unbound or kind Amazon Unbound. And I bought a couple of them and they're just nonsense. They're like literally translations of translations of translations back into English. And like nobody so my point is nobody is minding the store.

Yes. Literally they have set it up as a self service thing and they've got 90% of the book business. And I'm sympathetic to book publishers who are complete even though they are large corporations, they're at the mercy of this juggernaut who really does not seem to care as much as it once did. Well, I think that's a microcosm. Yeah, to take this out of publishing of where the world is going and the good and bad of it,

which is like, yeah, when you're, when, when your publisher is trying to get Barnes and Noble to support a book, they call a person and they can, there's that old school sort of pressing of the flash like, you know, we really sold them, they're excited, they liked our presentation and here's what we're gonna do, you know, in the way that, you know, we really sold them there, excited. They liked our presentation and here's what we're going to do, you know, in the way that, you know, a DJ might have gotten excited about a song in the 1950s or 60s and that made the artist.

And when it comes to Amazon, the reps at the publisher are talking to an algorithm in the same way that, you know, YouTube isn't picking what it thinks is going to be hot, it's an algorithm and that algorithm can also incidentally create radicalization or polarization that we've sort of that maybe in the mid-20th century it was about outsourcing overseas, now it's about outsourcing to an algorithm. And then how do you hold an algorithm accountable for the effects or consequences of its decisions? That's really difficult. Right. And the mistakes. I mean, a lot of the recent journalism around Amazon has been the quality of work in life and the fulfillment centers and in the transportation division.

And there are workers and drivers who they have a bad day and the algorithms take note and they're put on performance improvement plan or they're fired and they have they have no recourse and it's this is what Amazon has done through across its business they've they start new divisions with careful personalized attention from employees sometimes from Bezos himself and then they graduate into these scale businesses and they're run by technology. Yeah, and that's kind of terrifying because an algorithm doesn't care about the people on the other side of the equation. that again, sort of capsulates where we are as a society, which is that we've reduced people and complicated things like culture down to how it can be translated into data.

Yeah, exactly, exactly right. And the human cost is kind of appalling. And it's all anecdotal, right? I mean, the majority of workers and the drivers probably have fine experiences. But what we're finding now, what we've been finding for a few years among those of us who cover the big tech companies and cover Amazon,

is that the anecdotes are very powerful. People who depend on Amazon to make money for their families or during the pandemic who are depending on it, and they have a bad day. Or even, they're powerful examples where it's almost mysterious why the algorithm picks them out. And then suddenly they've lost their job after working diligently for years.

So yeah, I really feel like Amazon's recognized this. And this is why Bezos and the slash shareholder letter, you know, talked about wanting to be a more empathetic company. Is this, because I know you've written about other tech companies as well, like when you look at like the gilded age or the robber barons of the past, there was this, like they were sort of making these transformative decisions, these huge innovations, but there was kind of a complete indifference to like the actual workers at the steel mill or the people down in the mines or, you know, the people in the sewing factory or whatever it was.

And only later, you know, like in the case of an Andrew Carnegie, does the sort of, or John D. Rockefeller, does the sort of philanthropic, impulse kick in the desire to then, it's sort of they made this money in a somewhat exploitative or somewhat, let's call it, in different way to the human cost. Then later, it's like, okay, how do I make good for society? Is the, so the environmental cost

and the human cost of that, is that kind of where we are now with these giant companies making big decisions algorithmically that affect the lives of all these people and kind of just now waking up to like, oh, hey, you know, this decision to do the Facebook newsfeed this way now determines how a presidential election comes out. And are these founders do you think they're starting to wrestle with that? Or are they still detached from it

or deliberately hiding from it? Well, no, I think it's gonna be easiest for me to talk about Amazon here. I think they are wrestling with it. And it's funny, I'm gonna talk about this. And sometimes I have to make sure that I'm not like sort of being apologetic for Amazon. I feel like in the early years, there was a couple things were happening. One, I think there was an awareness that the warehouse work wasn't great. And you probably wanted to move people through it fairly quickly and move them on to other opportunities.

And so like when Bezos develops a tuition reimbursement program, he's very focused on basically this education program being just for high growth fields like computer science, right? He's not going gonna pay somebody's tuition to go take poetry classes. And I've got a funny anecdote about that. The other thing was he was very cognizant,

and then they fought me on this, but I believe he was very cognizant of the risk of unions and the threat of having an entrenched workforce that became more susceptible to organized labor, and then you'd have a situation where Amazon would lose the flexibility and start to resemble more like the giant automakers or the airlines. And so, both of those things created this sort of high velocity, high turnover, very transactional workforce in the fulfillment centers, where literally, unless you were promoted after three years, you weren't, you really weren't working at Amazon anymore.

And in fact, and I have this in the book, Bezos said, after three years, you're not going to get any more raises. And that, it sounds heartless. It really does. And, you know, but I feel like, yeah, he, you know, he, the unions were, were one thing and also he just didn't want people getting complacent and not giving Amazon their best. I feel like, yeah, the unions were one thing, and also he just didn't want people getting complacent and not giving Amazon their best.

And now to finally answer your question, Ryan, I do think they're wrestling with that first of all because of just the sheer numbers. I mean, they employ a million people in their warehouses in a very, a time of very low employment. And, you know, Amazon's wrestling with how are they gonna hire the next batch of people to get through the holiday season.

But also it's just the criticism, the avalanche of criticism from the fulfillment centers about how much of a sort of distant and cruel master Amazon can be. So I think they're having to finally kind of tinker with some of those levers. Yeah, I didn't think about that. So, you know, to an outsider, you might look at these warehouses and you know, this is kind of ainker with some of those levers. Yeah, I didn't think about that. So, you know, to an outsider,

you might look at these warehouses and you go, this is kind of a dead-end job. You know, why isn't there this, this or that? And that perhaps that's actually more of a feature than a bug. The idea is like, this is supposed to be temporary work or either it's a, you get promoted or this isn't the right place for you

But we don't want you to work at the warehouse for 20 years right I actually thought so you remember no man. Did you see no man's land? Yes, yeah, and you know, it's a wonderful film and it kind of a lot of criticism Well, I got some criticism for being actually too sympathetic to Amazon or at least not portraying any, you know, angry, angry bosses, you know, yelling at the Francis McDormand. But I actually thought it was like a perfect depiction because it kind of captured the melancholy transactional

nature of the work, right? She shows up once a year, there's this, there's like quiet camaraderie and then everyone goes their separate ways. And I don't know, I thought that was that was kind of right, you know, that this is a, you know, it's a way station for some workers and they come and they go and maybe they do a year then they leave and then they go back to it. But no, it's the worker certainly is not glamorous. Yeah, we spent some time in our V-Parks like that. We bought a camper at the beginning of the pandemic and we've gone around.

And it is an interesting slice of humanity and life that I think your average successful, particularly urban person has no understanding of. But you realize, oh, these people, they live here, but not really live here because they're here for three months working on an oil rig or there are three months at this Amazon warehouse temporarily, and then they're moving on to do construction at the new Tesla factory. They're just kind of going around from these things to things.

And it was actually helpful for me trying to understand, okay, like, who are these people, you know, believing conspiracy? I'm painting with a very broad brush here. But when you think about people who are, you know, falling for a conspiracy theory or voting for this candidate or that candidate, like, you're like, who are these people? I don't know any of them. It's like, I would urge you to go spend a week in a, you know, in an RV park in Arizona or any of the states. And you'd be like, oh, okay, this is a large part of American society. These are hardworking people. These are people who'd help you with a flat tire by the side of the road. But their existence is vastly different. Right. And what yours is like, and their media diet as a result is very different.

And they're so much of their experience as day to day is just transformatively different than yours. I think no manland, no madland did a good job providing a window into that world. Yeah. And I am personally always sort of careful. Like does my critique of Amazon culture, the work in the warehouse, or does the mainstream, you know, the other tech presses critique, does it represent a kind of coastal, elitist, sheltered view?

And I think it's true, like Amazon is now the second largest employer in the country, it will probably soon be the first at Clipsing Walmart. And there's something to the fact that, you know, they're bringing economic opportunity to the parts of the country where otherwise it probably wouldn't exist. Did you see that SNL skit last year that was like, what still works?

Or, you know, does it still work? And it was like going through the different parts of American culture and, and it's like, turns out nothing works. But one thing they settled on that was still working was Tom Brady, that like Tom Brady's as good as he was 20 years ago, if not better. But I'd argue like Amazon, like when I think of the last year and a half and I'm like, what American institutions did not massively let us down when things were really bad. I kind of think the US military has done a pretty damn good job and Amazon performed perhaps even better than expectations.

Yeah. And that's the last chapter in my book and you'll appreciate Ryan. I started working on this book in 2017. So I knew there was a whole kind of new chapter to the Amazon story, but I didn't really know where it would take me. And as I was working on the book, I had HQ2, Bezos's fight with the National Enquirer. The antitrust scrutiny started by David Citilini and Lena Khan in the House, and then the pandemic, which was the last chapter. And they weren't perfect.

The way in which they fired whistleblowers and commented upon some of the activist workers in the warehouses was troubling. I think during the period of ambiguity in the early in the pandemic March of 2020, they like a lot of other companies, made mistakes and put employees at risk, And some of those HR systems didn't scale as well as they should have. But by and large, yeah, Amazon was a lifeline. And I try to say this as much as I can, you know, it, I'm an, I'm, we're prime members, we're Alexa owners. And we did rely on Amazon and Whole Foods and Amazon Fresh Delivery during the pandemic? Yeah, I think, I mean, what else would you have relied on?

They were, in some cases, the only avenue available, right? And I mean, but it's so funny because I think a lot of the current enmity is around how they navigated the pandemic and how profitable and productive it was for them. And there is a sort of perversity to the fact that Amazon and all the big tech companies, going into the pandemic had all of the advantages and then even more so during, right? The all of Amazon's physical retail competitor suddenly

have to either close up shop or it becomes a health risk to go into those stores and Amazon just booms. And, you know, it would probably what had gotten where it is now without the pandemic, but it was an accelerant. And I feel like, a lot, I mean, you know, based on it's kind of can't cut a break right now, you know, in the in the popular press. And I think in large part, it is because of the unsameliness of how well Amazon did during the pandemic.

Got a quick message from one of our sponsors here and then we'll get right back to the show. Stay tuned. Yeah, I, I feel like we're in a similar bow. I did a book a few years ago about Peter Teal and his quest to destroy Gokker, which I know he embays a sort of disagreed on. But what I find, what I kept coming back to,

and it sounds like it's a similar place to you, I was just like, I don't agree with everything. In fact, some of it completely horrifies me. But on the other hand, I both respect and want to hold up the competence because competence and the ability to execute and do big things is severely and sorely lacking pretty much anywhere else in American life.

So it's like, you know, you could go like, wouldn't it be better if Jeff Bezos was this, that or the other, but you're just sort's like, you know, you could go like, wouldn't it be better if Jeff Bezos was this, that, or the other, but you're just sort of like compared to who, like, who would you rather have, you know, operating the world's largest e-commerce business in the middle of the pandemic? Like, I'm not sure, I'm not sure if you can trade off like that. Like, we need the competence. Like, it's a good, you, We need the competence. Like it's a good, you, it would be wonderful if the competence could be more empathetic and kind, but at the same time better than incompetence. Right.

That is true. I mean, there is a critique, though, and I hope it comes out in Amazon Unbound, which is developing these systems, moving fast, trying to, moving fast, having customer needs as kind of the North Star, and then constructing systems to minimize risk, to maximize operating leverage. A great example is the transportation network. And I tell the story in one of the chapters in the middle of the book where they realized they couldn't rely on FedEx or UPS or even the National Postal Service.

They were basically outgrowing all of their logistics providers. But they knew if they started employing drivers, that that would create an opening for the teamsters. And so they set up basically create this kind of fishery workplace arrangement where they hire independent companies who will hire the drivers. And they manage all those companies, of course, with algorithms as we were talking about.

And the drivers drive Amazon vans, and they wear Amazon uniforms. But they're not Amazon employees. And in the early days and Buzzfeed, and I think it was pro-public, I did great journals and about this. In the early days, those drivers were set upon the world with these ferocious deadlines and massive obligations

to deliver packages for the company. And there were some real carnage on the road, right? In terms of accidents and pedestrian deaths and whatnot. And then a torrent of lawsuits, of course, that are still being wrangled in the courts and some very quiet settlements. And so, yeah, Amazon, they build with competence and confidence and it's amazing to be hold but there have been costs

along the way. So what is that? I'm fascinated with it because on the one hand you sort of objectively understand like okay it's cheaper to do it this way, less liability to do it this way. At the same time of all the companies that could afford to do it, the right way like why doesn't Walmart just pay a dollar more an hour or why doesn't Amazon just say we're gonna hire Like what what when you have so much money and so much power what's what is it just the the the culture of Optimization makes it inconceivable to think about doing it any way other than the most efficient way, like, or because it's legal, therefore, it's out. Right.

Right. And look, look, they didn't invent this particular wheel. You know, FedEx has probably been the leader in contracting with drivers. And FedEx went through years and years of litigation and ultimately Supreme Court rulings saying that it was allowed in THL does the same thing. Now UPS employs its drivers. So the the the Fisher and this is unborrowing this term from this Brandeis University professor who wrote this great book The Fisher Workplace. But the contract relationship is being used all across the economy from the janitors at Apple to the cafeteria workers at Google. And it's right, it's more efficient.

And you avoid potential union incursions and you kind of offload all the messiness on the independent contractors. And Amazon needed to get going really quickly and to grow because it was outgrowing, it's logistics partners. So, you know, that was probably the right thing for them to do at the time, but there were costs.

And the danger is, if you're not perfectly optimized, if you decide, hey, we're going to do the right thing, even though it is 30% less efficient, the danger is what, a competitor comes in or a hedge fund buys up shares and pressures you to come around and do the other, like I guess it's like when you're the world's richest man, when you're so much market dominance, why not do it the right way? I guess that's

I wonder if you had an insight. Yeah, I think it's, look, in the book I wrote that it was fear of unions. Now they might disagree with that, but look, the teamsters just announced that their annual meeting that they're creating a completely new division to focus exclusively on Amazon. And it will be difficult for the teamsters because Amazon doesn't have any drivers. They don't work for Amazon. Yeah. So I think, I believe that that was one of the main things.

But, you know, when you talk about, but I mean, I think what would need to happen is the law would need to change. Because, you know, the fact that right now those drivers wear Amazon uniforms and drive Amazon vans and increasingly there are cameras and other technologies in the cars that monitor their performance. You remember the little dust up about how Amazon was putting cameras in these vehicles. So right now it's quacking and walking and talking like a duck, right? Right. They really look like Amazon employees.

So I do think the law would need to change for companies like FedEx and Amazon and DHL to start employing their drivers. It is interesting to me, you know, people will spend a lot of time, you know, looking at the practices of a company like Amazon and decide, you know, you don't like this, that or the other. And then I think your point is interesting. It's like, sure, but do you have a cleaning crew instead of hiring, you know, a full-time custodian at your office? Like these, it's interesting, as you point out, that these are somewhat standard practices for businesses big and small,

maybe even a medium sized, the owner of a medium sized company that's listening right now, might do some of these things. It's really just when you see the awesome scale of it at Amazon that the moral repugments or moral tension of it becomes harder to bear. It's the same with like when you read about, you know, Jeff Bezos not paying taxes. It's like, you're probably personally trying not you.

I just everyone is personally trying to reduce their tax burden. And then it's only when you see someone worth billions of dollars do it that you cry foul. Right. Yes, I could not believe that. Like, dude, did you really take the child tax credit? But of course, I mean, he might not have even, it's probably like his tax folks that are right doing their jobs.

And it really does, in both of these cases, it really starts with the law, right? And why aren't we means testing some of these things? And for larger companies, why isn't there an obligation for them to treat their employees fairly, or to even quote unquote employ them, if they're spending their entire career as working for the company? Well, I see it all the time where people go,

you know, I hate these companies, they're outsourcing, they're doing this, they're doing that. And then it's like, then they're like, hey, I have this great it all the time where people go, you know, I hate these companies. They're outsourcing. They're doing this They're doing that and then it's like then they're like, hey, I have this great idea for a t-shirt You're like, oh cool, and you're like and then you're like, so which one are you gonna buy? And they're like well, obviously we're gonna buy it from the one in China. It's cheaper, you know Like the second we have the ability to I think this is actually what's interesting about Shopify and I I had to buy us the founder of Shopify a couple months ago, what some of the sort of the e-commerce revolution is doing is weirdly bringing some of these previously decisions

that were previously only in the reach of true industrialists down home to you. You're deciding, hey, I had this idea for this little product. And now suddenly, you're deciding hey, I had this idea for this little product and now suddenly you're having to decide whether you want to spend 40% more to manufacture it domestically or you're gonna get the best price by getting it made in Bangladesh, you know like Suddenly, it's not so easy to be Glyb about it when it's your profit margins that it's eating into Yeah, yeah, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, like I guess it's like, you found a company become successful, you write it.

I'm always fascinated with the need to do another thing and another thing and another thing all at the same time. And then suddenly they're also, Jeff Bezos is personally involved in the Hollywood projects, their green lighting, and suddenly he's also running the Washington Post. Is there just an eternal restlessness in these people? Or what is it that makes them continue going when they have more than a human being could ever possibly need?

It's an interesting question. Well, I mean, look at it from Bezos' point of view. He is, you know, there are still risks all around Amazon. There are major competitors that seem very formidable. He's dealing with Google and Apple. Google in the consumer business trying to get into the shopping, Apple with devices, Microsoft and Google in the cloud business. I'm sure it doesn't feel like smooth sailing. At the same time, you mentioned Hollywood,

they've got a 15 years ago, a good business selling DVDs, and suddenly that goes away. So if they do nothing, then Amazon is going to shrink. And so they develop a video on demand store, and then Netflix starts to undermine video on demand, you know, buying TV shows and movies online. And so if they do nothing, Amazon will shrink. So then the answer is, okay, they're going to have to do a subscription service themselves, and they don't have this big, a big of library. So, Bezos integrates that into prime. And then suddenly, Amazon's paying huge amounts of money to studios and networks to license

programming. So, if they do money, if they do nothing, you know, Amazon's numbers are going to start to decline because it's so expensive to license its content. And so, they create Amazon studios and they start to make their own programming. And then Disney and Apple and Paramount and all the other big studios start to open streaming services themselves. And so if Amazon does nothing, they're going to be outclass. They buy MGM.

This is just an example of how, yes, it seems like he has everything, but if he stops paddling the boat, the boat slows down, right? And so he's always like eyes on the future, looking ahead to the next move. Although in some respects, Ryan, maybe he has stopped, right? Because he's no longer CEO, so now he's devoting himself to other things. No, that's a really profound way of expressing it. I'm glad you did that. It's, it's, what he's, for all of his success and power and freedom, he actually has no ability to do nothing

or both existentially and financially, you can't rest on your laurels because at the level that you're at, someone is always coming and trying to disrupt you just in the way that you disrupted publishers and Barnes and Noble and borders two decades ago. Right, exactly, exactly. And one of the things that Bezos says often is

if you fight the future, the future will win. You always need to be leaning up against the future, leaning into the future, inventing the next thing, riding the next wave. And I think that's, it sounds trite, but it's sort of fundamental to his philosophy. You know, what technology has created kind of the most rapid set of changes in the business world in, you know, in generations. And unless you're constantly writing that, writing that wave, you're going to get left behind. Yeah, that, that it's, it's always day one thing. On the one hand, it's kind of inspiring and cool. And, and you, you look at it from the outside as being awesome. But it's probably also exhausting that 25 years in, you're making trillions of dollars and you don't actually ever get to relax or just be. Right. No, I think this is like part of the

The critique of the culture why why it is so relentless. It's it's this yeah It's this notion based Oced it into the company very early on that unless they're rushing ahead Arms out stretched at all times are going to get left behind and that is I think exhaust things a good word for it I've said that before where like And that is, I think, exhausting is a good word for it. I've said that before where like, evolutionarily, it's good. You know, like Elon Musk starts a company and that's not enough. So I have to start another company, another company. I understand why evolutionarily, that's good. From a capitalistic perspective, I understand why that's good.

But then when I look at it, I wonder if it's actually fun to be you on Musk. So it's like good collectively, but perhaps tragic or costly individually. And we shouldn't discount the element of ego and all this, right? I mean, I think they're like, you know, with what the space initiative, and I have a chapter about Blue Origin in this book. And Bayzo's was content to move very slowly. And he saw it, I think, as a sort of multi-generational effort.

And then Elon, you know, with SpaceX, kind of changes the game in space and starts the fun SpaceX with government contracts and commercial contracts. And he's going much faster, and he's eclipsing basos as the tech space entrepreneur. And now here, basos is about to go at at least some personal risk to himself. I would imagine on the very first crude new shepherd launch in July 20th. And I do think there's a, you know, and you can see them fight mildly on Twitter. I think there's a spirited competition there. And some of the some of those restlessness that we're talking about is a little bit of these guys feeling,

wanting to be the last man standing. Yeah, in the same way that you and I might look at another author who published at the same time and go, how did they get that? Or why is there book selling more than mine? I'm always surprised when you meet some of these people that, yeah, they actually do notice that someone is three names above them on the Forbes list or that someone else got this

profile or, you know, is someone else is getting a, you know, a pass or a scene is this, like, I think Elon Musk is the sort of rock star star CEO makes a lot of other CEOs who previously were content to be boring or not have large public platforms suddenly go wall. If he has it, I have to have that too. I like how you just declared the billionaire ego contest to the sad psychology of the author who's stressing over the sales list and complaining to their significant other. Why, yes, why am I not higher up on the sales? Why is my Amazon ranking falling? Yes. Well, I noticed every, I've met my handful of these people that we're sort of talking about. And they're, they all want to do books because, you know, because so and so did a book

and it was popular and, you know, it's like, you know, Ray Dalio does a book and it's a huge hit. So now all the other hedge fund people need to do a book about, you know, their investment philosophy and, you know, it's clearly not about the money that they can make from the project. It's about some other kind, like the ability for humans to create rankings and then want to compete in those rankings is like the primary driving force of our species, I guess. Yes, and the secret to the success of, and the longevity of US news and world reports of parallel.

Of course. No, that's the college admissions scandal. You're right. It's just like, I don't want my daughter to go to ASU, not when the other guy at the office sent his daughter to University of Texas. Do you think it's like, do you think it's enjoyable to be Jeff Bezos or is it a tortured existence? No, first of all, I'm going to quick-none sequitur. Did you see Mark Zuckerberg post over the weekend?

Yes. His hoverboard or what if what is that thing with the American? A foil. I forget what it's called, but yes, it's some sort of weird surfboard. Right. And he's holding the American flag. And like instantly, you know, you can hear the collective disapproval of his surfboard. Right. And he's holding the American flag. And like instantly, you know, you can hear the collective disapproval of his Twitter critics, and a thousand memes being born. And he just doesn't care. Right. Why would he? He's having a ball. He's Mark Zuckerberg. He's a

billionaire, Facebook's a trillion dollar company. The success is unrivaled. I think that's the same with Bezos. He doesn't care. But do you think, I mean, he did post that. Why would he have posted it if he didn't need the same social media validation? I bet he looked at the views, and he's happy with how many views it's done. Well, and similarly, like Bezos is posting to Instagram now,

quite a bit about space. This weekend I saw, he's off on Barry Dillard's yacht. He's building an identical yacht, which I wrote about in the book. They're gall eventing around the Mediterranean. They know that the tabloid photographers will report about this, that being the richest guy in the world and being on a luxury yacht in the middle of the Mediterranean, it's not a great look.

But he doesn't care. No, he doesn't, I don't think he cares at all. I think that he's, first of all, he's hovering at a much higher altitude where who knows how much of the CECs. But by and large, I think he's extremely confident and deservedly so of his success and probably feels like, you know, that he's got these long term things that'll make the Instagram feed, so ugly if he didn't care. But I think that, look, if you asked whether the existence was a pleasurable one, I mean, clearly he's enjoying himself right now.

Yeah, it's everyone's small. You'll be at a conference, obviously not in a while, but you'll be at a conference and, you know, someone, some person like a Jeff Bezos will be there with the same badge, sit around, and you're just like, I know why I'm here. What, what compels you to be here? So I sometimes I wonder if, if they're on a treadmill that they can't get off, or do they actually enjoy it, and they're just doing what anyone would do if they could do whatever they wanted. I can't always tell.

I mean, he's still like, one word that he uses a lot is adventure. And he used it in the Instagram post where he was inviting his brother to come on the rocket ship with him. When he when he toasts some friends of his and workers of his, that told me he all will hold toast to adventure and fellowship, the things that he's done over the past 10 years, finding taking expedition out into the Atlantic Ocean to find some, I think it was the Apollo era rockets on the seabed floor or going to the North Pole and dog sledding. He's all about pursuing adventures and unique experiences.

It's almost like the same kind of restlessness that he brought to Amazon, always moving forward, always doing something new. He's brought to his personal life. So I don't know that I would describe it as a compulsion. I think it's, it's like, you know, he's, he's, he's, he's living life to the fullest. Yeah, no, that, that makes sense. Uh, what do you think, you're in the somewhat unusual position of being able to write a book about a topic and then like enough stuff happened You're writing the second book about the topic obviously lots happened in between But I'm curious as you sat down to write about the book

I imagine you you were thinking you know, you don't have to have read the first book to read the second one as you got a second crack at some of the stuff What do you think you got wrong the first time? Oh, that's interesting. I don't know if I feel like I got anything wrong. I mean, Amazon, like your read on it, certain things different than, right, you know, like in the, the two, Michael Lewis's new book, he basically sort of admits that, in the fifth risk, he got the CDC wrong,

that he, you know, that they weren't, they weren't what he thought they were. Yeah. Okay, so in the everything store, we, we talked a little bit about this. I have a lot of fun, kind of chronicling,

baselesses, one line devastating remarks to employees where he, kind of chronicling baselesses, one line devastating remarks to employees where he kind of cut them off at the knees. And I even have a sort of list of them, I'm scanning the book to see if I can find it, I probably can't. But I kind of like have an all-time greatest hits. And I think that gave the impression of a kind of jobsy and monster who spoke impulsively and emotionally. And as I said, I think it was true for a while, but he's sort of much more methodical about that. And I don't think I did a good enough job in the first book showing the evolution of the management style. And that's, I think, hopefully comes through a little bit more in Amazon and bound that

he isn't a Steve Jobs like figure. He's much more methodical and deliberate. He'll often speak last at a meeting. He'll go one by one and question everyone in the room. He's very careful about how he weighs in, because he knows that as the founder, as the CEO, as this legendary business figure, his words carry a lot of weight. And they can spark a whole, a month of wheel spinning and paper writing inside the company if he says something flippantly.

So I think probably if folks read the everything store, they were titillated a little bit by the depiction of Bezos as a kind of office monster. And that's, and hopefully there was, it's really part of a more nuanced portrayal, but as we all know, people gravitate towards the most sensational stuff. So that's the one thing that I would say. Yeah, that's one of my favorite scenes in Silicon Valley, the CEO of Hulu or something says, the bear is sticky with honey.

He's like trying to get tea and the little honey bear. He says this and all the employees take it to mean some grand philosophical remark and it sends them on this crazy cycle. All right, I know you gotta go, but one last question. I was I know you got to go, but one last question. I was curious, you described the sort of the scandal, the divorce, whatever scandal, Jeff Bezos is mistress or what have you. You describe it as a shocking lapse in discipline.

I'm working on a book right now about discipline. And I've just, he does seem that for a person who can do and say anything he wants, he has remained remarkably self-contained and disciplined. I'm just curious on your read on his, his, this idea of temperance, despite all his fame and fortune, it does seem to be relatively self-contained. Yeah, I mean, other than the Lauren Schez National and the choir scandal, which is still mystifying to me how he, why he conducted himself and that relationship basically out in the open at restaurants in LA, at hotels, restaurants in Miami and New York, out in the open, and somehow assume that the tabloid media wouldn't be interested in the private affairs of one of the richest people in the world.

And then they were. And then he, you know, ascribed political motives to it and blamed the government of Saudi Arabia when, you know, all the available evidence suggests that it was Lauren Senjus' brother who turned over that information. That was, I think remains a sort of aberration in the Bezos story. And now when you see, you know, first of all, he appears publicly,

excuse me, Ryan, he appears publicly so seldomly. And yeah, and when he speaks on social media, it's very curated. So yeah, I think he operates right now with a lot of discipline, and when he speaks on social media, it's very curated. So, yeah, I think he operates right now with a lot of discipline, particularly when it comes to his public image. Yeah, and I'm not sure how many of us would be able to maintain that if suddenly we were thrust in a truly limitless, powerful position. I'm always, I always wonder what what what you would do if you

suddenly had everything and could do anything. I don't know that I would be strapping myself to the top of a rocket to go to space, but otherwise I probably would be enjoying myself. I think so. Brad, thank you so much. I loved the books and I really enjoyed this conversation. Thank you, Ryan. Great talking to you. Hey, it's Ryan. If you want to take your study of stoicism to the next level, I want to invite you to join us over at Daily Stoic Life. We have daily conversations about the podcast episodes, about the daily email. We actually do a special weekend set of emails for everyone. You get all our daily stoic courses and challenges totally for free.

That's hundreds of dollars of value every single year, including our new year, new you challenge, which we're going to launch in January. You get a special cloth bound edition of the best of meditations that we've done. You get a bunch of cool stuff. It's an awesome community. I've loved being a part of it. I've loved getting to meet everyone who's trying to take their study of stoicism to the next level. Love to have you join us. Check us out at DailyStokeLife.com. We'd love to have you and join us on this digital stoa that we that we've

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