Ryan Holiday's Blog, page 37

Some Recent Writing

Here are some recent articles from me:

New York Observer (where I am now a contributing editor)

Apple’s Free Ride: Why Journalists Treat Product Launches Like News

Broken on Purpose: Why Getting It Wrong Pays More Than Getting It Right

Forget Lehrer and Zakaria—Most Online Journalism Is Rotten to the Core

Fast Company

Why Books Are The Ultimate New Business Card

And some info on my next book, which will be on the intersection stoicism, opportunity and strategy.

A Hustler’s Art

I have three pieces of art in my house. One is a beautiful wax portrait of my hero William T. Sherman, one’s a painting done by an elephant and the other—my favorite—is a framed, signed original Joey Roth Hustler poster.

I’ve come to know Joey Roth since I discovered the piece. But even if I hadn’t, it would still be one of the most striking pieces of art I’d ever seen. It’s the only piece of art I’ve ever given as a gift (to Robert Greene, Neil Strauss and others). It’s one of the few things I’ve ever thought of getting as a tattoo.

Why? Because I think it properly defines the differences between a charlatan (all talk), a martyr (only action), and a hustler (action and talk in a feedback loop, fueling each other). The message was exactly what I needed at 22 or however old I was when I got it. I was a hustler then, and it’s taken me to where I am today. Now, I feel like I’ve internalized the message. I was ready for what comes next.



And now there is a second piece in the series. Where the first was about just one side of the equation. This one is about the whole thing. Inspiration, discipline, risk, humility. The virtues, the epithets of people who get shit done. Together, they form bullet, the bullet that if assembled properly, if struck correctly fires at four thousand ft a second.

To me, the second poster unpacks the hustler column from the first poster—perhaps, a more accurate version of it too. There’s no better metaphor for a hustler than a bullet. Lethal, vicious, a machine. All these things, yes. But as a hustler gets better, they realize there is more to the game. They decide they don’t want to be a casualty of it. They can start to transcend the rules they understood and manipulated.

As Roth writes, they learn to “design your project to cut through apathy and reach those who will appreciate it, but realize that once it’s in the world, its success and failure are no longer yours. Temperature, dew point, and Earth’s rotation affect a bullet’s flight as much as the shooter’s intention.”

A young hustler is supremely confident. A wise hustler is confident, but detached. They know that nine of ten projects will fail—rounds will miss their target—and they’re ok with that, they can see the bigger picture. They’ve moved from the short play to the long play.

I find myself wrestling with that transition now. So this poster will go on my wall alongside the others.

How to Repay Your Enemies

How do you repay the people who fucked you over?

It is a little harder to get into one post just because there are so many ways that people can wrong you. There is the overt action: the attack, the theft, the lie, the deliberate slight. And then there is the let down, the negligence, laziness, and occasionally, there’s someone with contagious bad luck. Most of the time, we ignore it. As we should. But sometimes, we can’t.

Imagine you are Sam Zemurray. You try to give friendly advice to the company you love, try to contribute through the proper channels, but they slam the door in your face. They are running your baby into the ground. You know what must be done.  So you go to the board meeting in New York City, you sit there quietly. Then you raise your hand and speak. They laugh in your face, mock your difficult accent. You storm out, maybe they think they’ve won.

When you return, it’s armed with the stock proxies for a majority share in the company. “You gentlemen have been fucking up this this business long enough. I’m going to straighten it out.” And now it’s time to drop the hammer: “You’re fired. Can you understand that, Mr. Chairman?” as you fling the bag of proxies across the table.

Sometimes an aggressive strike, or even revenge, is not emotion—but strategy (like a co-worker who is steadily encroaching on your projects despite discussions, or perhaps you need to generate a little controversy to get press). Robert Greene calls this “knowing when to be bad.”

One element of mastery is the ability to no longer need to react emotionally. To know what you need to do and not be distracted by immediacy. Repaying your enemies properly—and effectively—maintains that rule.

Only the top predators can afford to toy with their prey. As Ambrose Bierce once said, real skill is to “stab, beg pardon and turn the weapon in the wound.” Only the best can manage effective action as an artistic statement. But those who can, have all the fun.

A sad part of it all is this: people do you wrong out of incompetence a lot more of than they do out of malice. If they were consciously trying to harm you, believe it or not, they’d probably have done less damage. I’m not saying that because it take the sting out of it. Rather, that you can’t get back at someone who already lost—who can’t get things right even when they try. These people, you must ignore.

But as for the rest of our lives, there is one unescapable political fact: People will fuck with your stuff. They will treat you bad. Mess things up. Try to disrespect you or keep you out. What happens? You get pissed and you feel like murdering them. You sit there and stew and rage and rant. You’re only tipping the scales further out of your favor.

As I tried to explain to myself a few years ago in exactly one of these moments, this is no reason to grind your teeth. Smile, they just gave you an opportunity. Not an excuse, but a justification.

Enjoy it. Learn from it. Remember, as Plutarch one titled an essay, How To Profit By One’s Enemies. In a world, where so much will go wrong and sadly, so many people will wrong you, you better know how to turn it something positive or at the very least, into a cathartic game. Or you will be one angry person.

How to Repay Your Mentors

How do you for people who have done so much for you? How do you thank them?

Well, first let’s get something out of the way. Very rarely does anyone else help anyone else out for genuinely altruistic reasons. Unless your mentors were blood relatives, they took an interest in you in large part because there was an interest in it for them. Having a whiz kid or a protege around is good for business, that’s why they’re doing it.

So deliver. Have your shit together. Want it more than they want it for you. Don’t be crazy. Spot new opportunities, never care about credit. All the “Advice to a Young Man” stuff.

But after that, when it comes to all the intangibles–everything they gave you that extends way past any reasonable definition of “work obligation”–there is only one thing you can do: earn it. They invested time in you, they gave you a bit of their truly non-renewable resource. You can’t pay them back. You can only make it have been worth it. Validate the investment and make it clear that you appreciate it. Be a good person; do what you love.

Without being cheesy, I also have to discuss the final step: paying it forward. The people who gave you your first job, showed you their secrets, picked up the check when you couldn’t afford to? They don’t want that stuff back. They want you to see you learn from their example. I’m not saying it’s good karma, but think about it like this: the stuff they gave you, that wasn’t a gift. It was given to you in trust. You don’t exclusively own that knowledge, you aren’t entitled to profit from the advice, you didn’t get some free ride. No, you just got access to it for a while, access that was contingent on you referring other deserving people to it down the line. Got it?

As we get older and more successful, we find ourselves in the position to help people. We were once in their shoes, and we know how we got from there to here. We find meaning in that journey and want other to experience it. At the same time, success makes us soft. It alienates us, makes us a little less hungry. But our experience makes us smarter–we know that our skill combined with someone else’s inefficient but fresh energy would be potent. More potent than either attribute in isolation. Which is why both parties seek each other out and benefit from it.

Just remember that that’s what mentorship is. And that whatever role you play in that equation at whatever time, you better fulfill it completely. It’s what you owe.

Savages

I think savagery is underrated. We talk so much about personal development and refinement that what gets lost is that other part of ourselves, the darker, animalistic part. “Inspiration” is so much cleaner and less objectionable that it’s all we want to focus on. I’ve never been one for convention, so I’ll say what needs to be said here. Being savage is a good thing.

Let me be clear, what I’m not talking about are the kind of evil people who inflict harm on others. Or rely on physical intimidation for their success. There is little excuse for that in today’s world. What I’m talking about is a kind of self-directed savagery in a contained setting. When William Hazlitt was talking about the “wild beast resuming its sway within us” he was condemning the mob/tribe mentality, but I think it can also be a positive motivational factor.

I think about savagery when I go out and run–after hours of work, weeks of it in a row–every single day in the Louisiana heat. I enjoy sweating so hard it stings my eyes. I smile if I catch myself teetering a little bit towards the end. I’m not running for exercise, I’m running because there is a part of me that is a little bit savage. And I give it free reign and I benefit from it. There is savagery in juijitsu, which I do 4-5 days a week when I’m not traveling. There’s something savage about getting destroyed round after round and the fact that I keep coming back for more. I suppose I could get better faster by reading and studying but I think it’s better to do it this way. I go to get my ass kicked for a reason, and it doesn’t bother me that I do. I relish it a little bit. And mostly I learn from it.

In 19th century dog fighting, bull dogs weren’t the strongest or most aggressive dogs, but the fat and extra skin around their neck made it harder for other dogs to tear their throat out. Dogs could clamp down on it, but they couldn’t kill. That’s fucking savage. There’s a lesson there.

You don’t have to be the best, you just have to be harder to destroy. You have to be relentless. Indefatigable. Sometimes, to get in the right position, you have to be able to absorb a lot of blows. You’ve got to know you’re taking hits for a reason, and have the tolerance and endurance to bear it. If you can actually enjoy and seek out that process? Well, then you’re a fucking savage. And you’re going to be very successful.

Responding to Peter Shankman

Some of you may not have seen this because it was buried in a lot of the other more interesting press, but last week I completely blew up the PR/blogging industry by revealing the fatal flaws in HelpAReporterOut.com (HARO). The revelations garnered such an enormous outcry that HARO (and some lazy, entitled people in the journalistic and PR communities) had to respond. Naturally, they decided to strike back at me personally. It doesn’t surprise me that they did this, but that doesn’t mean I am going to tolerate it.

You can check out my reply at the Huffington Post: Honoring a Reporter’s Obligation: Dissecting Peter Shankman’s Hypocrisy

Did I expect people to have a strong reaction to this book? Sure. Did I think that, when faced with my accusations, some in the media would try to blacklist or marginalize me? Of course. But they forgot one thing: I don’t need them to get my message out. I never have. And unlike Shankman, since I am not repressing my hypocrisy–in fact, I have unloaded it–I am able to to look at all this calmly, and rationally and respond appropriately.

I hope you enjoy it. Let the discussion begin.

Welcome to Trust Me, I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator

Release week for Trust Me, I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator is here. If I am as good as I say I am in the book, you should be hearing, seeing and reading a lot about it.* If you want updates on what’s happening about the book, tour dates for me, and links to articles I’ve written recently, check back to this post going forward. If you’re coming to this site for the first time, the links below should tell you a little bit more about me. Or just read this bio. Hope you stick around and don’t forget to subscribe to my reading recommendations

**If you really want to help me out or haven’t bought the book yet, pick up an extra copy on Barnes and Noble. It’s same price as Amazon and counts better for my NYT list sales**

**There is also special deal for the book on AppSumo this week. You can give it as a gift since it comes with a bunch of extras**

Upcoming Events/Appearances:

7/18: TUNE IN LIVE: Marketing Master Mind Session with Lewis Howes at 8pm EST

7/19: TUNE IN LIVE: Media Mayhem with Allison Hope Weiner at 4pm EST

7/19: Book Launch Party in New York City (hosted by Michael Ellsberg). All are welcome, must rsvp. 9pm est

7/31: Book signing @ Octavia Books in New Orleans

8/15: Book signing @ Book Soup in LA

8/22:

Articles I’ve Written:

UnCollege.com: How Dropping Out Can Change Your Life

FourHourWorkWeek.com (Tim Ferriss): The 5 Top-Performing American Apparel Ads, and How They Get PR for Free (NSFW)

Forbes: What is Media Manipulation? A Definition and Explanation

Columbia Journalism Review: Our gullible press, Ryan Holiday explains how the singular pursuit of traffic…

Forbes: How Greenpeace Manipulated the Media Like a Pro: Analyzing the Shell Oil Hoax

Forbes.com: How Your Fake News Gets Made (Two Quick Examples)

[Much more to come this week]

Interviews:

TechCrunch: Keen On…Ryan Holiday: Confessions of a Media Manipulator

Huffington Post: Ryan Holiday, Author Of ‘Trust Me, I’m Lying’, Wants To Break The Media

Chase Jarvis Live: 90 minute mastermind interview with me

CTV: Me discussing the future of music and Alex Day

Tribal Author: Book Marketing Breakout: Ryan Holiday’s Trust Me, I’m Lying

Rise to the Top: Exclusive 90 min interview with me

Daily Dot: Media manipulator Ryan Holiday finally comes clean

Communication Lab: 1hr podcast with me on writing, media manipulation and news

BoingBoing: Gweek Podcast (really good)

Recent Press:

New York Post: PR exec tells all about manipulating the media — and spreading lies online

Forbes: How This Guy Lied His Way Into MSNBC, ABC News, The New York Times and More

Daily Dot: Exclusive excerpt: “Trust Me, I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator”

Austinist: Tucker Max’s Publicist Is Really Good At His Job

BoingBoing: Man Punks Journalists

FastCompany: “Media Manipulator” Ryan Holiday Proves His Point By Getting This Story Published

Poynter: NY Times, CBS, others fix stories that featured fake expert Ryan Holiday

BoingBoing: Book trailer: Trust Me, I’m Lying

MediaBistro: 24-Year-Old Marketing Director Lands Major Book Deal

DIY Themes: How A Reformed Media Manipulator Uses The Web To Generate Sales

Silicon Bayou News: Book Review: Ryan Holiday’s Tell-All on Manipulating the Media

For those of you new to me and my writing altogether, here are some of my most popular posts:

The Narrative Fallacy (also see The Soundtrack of Your Life Delusion and The Second Act Fallacy)

Advice to a Young Man Hoping to Go Somewhere

Schemes and Scams

Read to Lead: How to Digest Books Above Your “Level”

Contemptuous Expressions

A False Sense

Stoicism 101: A Practical Guide for Entrepreneurs

The Experimental Life: An Introduction to Michel de Montaigne

Is This Who You Want to Be?

The Dress Suit Bribe

*This blog has never focused much on my work (writing instead about philosophy, life and strategy) and I’ve only talked a little bit about my book here. I plan to keep it that way, so don’t worry. However, with the publicity for the book and all the press planned for this week there is going to be a rush of new readers.

The Swarm Strategy (How to Learn About Anything)

Someone asked me recently about my reading habits and how I decide what I want to read. In the past, I’ve liked to use the rabbit hole analogy: falling down the endless hole of a subject, person or place. In my “read to lead” strategy, I talk about doing this by finding your next book to read inside the text or works cited of the book you’re currently reading. But I’ve tweaked my habits lately and it wasn’t until I had this conversation that I noticed.

I don’t fall down a hole, I swarm. Take the American Civil War, which I’ve recently been reading about. After a few years of scattered books on the topic, in early in 2012 I swarmed the topic. I detailed part of what I read on it in my last Reading List Newsletter.

The Civil War: My Obsession

I’ve been so deep [into the] Civil War that I lost track of all the books. Of course it started last year when I read Sherman by BH Liddell Hart. I came to admire Sherman so deeply that I read two more books about him: his amazing Memoirs and a big old book from 1933, Sherman: Fighting Prophet. From there I went on to Grant’s Memoirs, which are incredibly readable and deeply moving. After that, I read both of Robert Penn Warren’s quick books (mostly on the cultural significance and character of the war):Jefferson Davis Gets His Citizenship Back and The Legacy of the Civil War. I was briefly curious about Nathan Bedford Forrest but a read of That Devil Forrest and his shocking Wikipedia page make it clear to me that the guy is the definition of a psychopath. I also read large parts of Shelby Foote’s epic The Civil War: A Narrative (mostly the Vicksburg campaign and Sherman’s march) as well as parts of The American Civil War by John Keegan. Finally, I read the biographies of a bunch of Southern/Civil War writers in Patriotic Gore by Edmund Wilson, which helped me understand and contextualize what I’d already read from the people listed above. I don’t know if you guys need to follow me so deeply down this hole, but I strongly recommend at least exploring it. It’s totally changed how I see so much of history. I think I can say with confidence now that I “understand” the Civil War, and that feels good.

To give a complete picture of what I’ve consumed on the topic though, I would need to add: All 10 hours of Ken Burn’s documentary Civil War. A trip to Vicksburg (twice) and Natchez. At least 50 long form articles on the Time’s Disunion blog. Nearly everything in The Atlantic’s Civil War commemorative issue, countless Wikipedia pages and other random articles I saved in Instapaper. I read all of Ambrose Bierce’s fiction about the Civil War, along with many stories he wrote after and purchased and flipped through two biographies about him. I read a great, popular non-fiction book about Lincoln’s assassination and the hunt for Jefferson Davis. I had long conversations about the war with anyone who would listen. I even bought a beautiful painting of Sherman, which I hung on my wall.

I’m not going to call myself a Civil War buff because that’s stupid. This isn’t an idle pastime. I think you can see from list that I had a clear plan of attack. I was deep diving into a subject and surrounding it from all angles. I didn’t want to simply understand it from books, I needed to see parts of it in person, here is through the indirect perspectives of biographies and literature and I needed to digest it with the help of people smarter than me. When I have picked the carcass clean enough–taken the lessons I can and will use from my learning–I leave, relquishing the pedantic details for the buzzards behind me. Then move on to the next kill.

In the last year or so I’ve done this with a couple other subjects and authors to varying degree, such as Raymond Chandler or the city of Los Angeles. The idea being that if I really, really want to learn about something, casually pursuing one book to another. No, you must set upon it consequentially, concurrently and comprehensibly. Nothing works in learning quite like total immersion. Immersion allows you to make connections. It allows you to challenge the authors you’re reading (or let one author challenge another and then stick with the victor)

So there you have it: the swarm strategy. It’s simple. Find a topic it. Forget the rabbit hole and instead win by utterly overwhelming force. And then of course, it’s time for the final and most important step: moving on. After devouring one subject completely, be sure to find another.

Take Little Steps

I can’t think of that much I WANT to do but haven’t. The reason is simple: I generally do what I want, close to when I decided I wanted it

I have a friend who is not like this.”I’m thinking about traveling to China,” he’ll say. Knowing him, I always respond: “Dude, you will never go to China.” His reply is beautifully the same every time: “I could totally go to China [or whatever he's dreaming about that day]” You could, but you don’t. He never does.

I think it, I assign it. I assign it, I do it. He thinks it. And leaves it at that. As though figuring out how much it will cost, committing to saving up the money and then later, booking the trip is some insurmountable task. Of course he could do all those things, but that was never really the choke point.

This is why exercise is such a good metaphor and lesson. If you want to be able to run 10 miles, what to do about it is fairly simple: Start by running one mile. (which itself requires only putting one foot in front of the other). Then slowly run more until you can. In any sport, the path is the same. No matter how small or big the goal: You must commit and then start.

I don’t tell myself I’d like to go for run today. No, I going to run. And not just today but nearly everyday. The same goes for everything else I have ever decided to do or wanted to do, from my book deal on down.

I’m not going to claim that these things are easy by any stretch. But they are simple. And when I compare myself to other people I noticed that we both say the things we want to do or like to have. Check back in, they never seem to be any closer to that thing. I am, and I’ve moved on to the next one.

Trust me, I’m not possessed by some insatiable ambition. I haven’t known what I want since I was 4 years old and focused on everything I had on it. No, I just start. And I don’t waste time thinking about what it’d be nice to have–I’d rather just get it and see for myself. Before every show, the comedian Kevin Hart reminds his staff: “Everyone wants to be famous, nobody wants to do the work” and then they hit the stage and get to work.

I gloss over the big things because I know that’s not the issue. Otherwise the same attitude wouldn’t manifest itself in the tinniest and most banal parts of our lives: “Oh I heard that book was good and I’m thinking about buying it.” Do you know how many books I heard were good but don’t own? Like zero. It’s a book–just make the investment. You definitely won’t read it if you don’t own it. And what does it fucking matter in the end if you turn out to be wrong? It doesn’t.

People don’t get this because, partly, they don’t really want the things they say they want. They want to be the person who has certain things rather than actually do it. But even some of that comes from ignorance: these people don’t know how to do things, they don’t know how straight forward it is. Figure out what you want to do and then break it down from there. Take little steps. Then you are there. And the beauty of it all is that the risks are rarely very high. You decide not to go to China? Now you have a pile of money to spend on something else. Not so horrible is it?

NOTE: I’m going to be on Chase Jarvis Live today (June 27th) at 11am PST. Tune in and ask questions. Would love to hear from you all. 

Trust Me I’m Lying: Official Book Trailer

I announced my book last week and told you a little bit about it. This week I get to show you something even cooler: the book trailer.

The guys at Simplifilm put this together and I think it captures the book perfectly (it’s also the only book trailer I’ve ever liked besides Tim Ferriss’s. I can’t recommend them or their work highly enough.) If you’re curious, the narrator isn’t me, it’s the wonderful Robert Bruce, whose writing is a must-subscribe. I got very lucky that he was willing to do the voice over.

If you haven’t preordered the book yet, hopefully this trailer will convince you. The materials I’m giving away for preorder actually include case studies that show exactly how to do the trading up the chain process in the trailer.

Also, IMPORTANT NOTE: I will be on Chase Jarvis LIVE on Wednesday, June 27th, 11:00am Seattle time (2 pm NYC time or 19:00 London). Definitely tune in.

Here are some quick blurbs on the book:

“Ryan is part Machiavelli, part Ogilvy, and all results. From American Apparel to the quiet campaigns he’s run but not taken credit for, this whiz kid is the secret weapon you’ve never heard of.” —Tim Ferriss, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller The 4-Hour Workweek

“This book will make online media giants, very, very uncomfortable.”—Drew Curtis, founder Fark.com

“The strategies Ryan created to exploit blogs drove sales of millions of my books and made me an internationally known name. The reason I am standing here while other celebrities were destroyed or became parodies of themselves is because of his insider knowledge.”—Tucker Max, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell