Ryan Holiday is an American author and media strategist, best known for bringing Stoic philosophy to a wide audience in books such as The Obstacle Is the Way, Ego Is the Enemy and The Daily Stoic. Before that he was director of marketing at American Apparel, and his first book, Trust Me, I’m Lying, exposed how online media can be manipulated.
Brian Rose has interviewed Holiday on London Real twice, in 2014 and 2016. They talked about media manipulation, his marketing work, how he writes, Stoicism, and why ego is the enemy of lasting success.
Both interviews are listed below in order with a short summary.
Ego Is The Enemy (2016). His Stoic thinking applied to ambition, success and failure. For his media career, watch Trust Me, I’m Lying (2014).
In 2014 Holiday explained how blogs chasing traffic will publish stories with little checking, and how marketers exploit that. He has been open about the stunts he used and how they worked.
Drawing on Marcus Aurelius, he argues that the problems in your path are also the material for progress: you cannot always control events, but you can control how you respond.
In 2016 he told Brian Rose that ego undermines people at every stage, from early ambition to success to failure, and that humility and hard work matter more than self-belief.
He argued that entrepreneurs should accept they may not be the right people to run what they have created, and that recognising this is itself a test of ego.
Ryan Holiday is an American author and media strategist, best known for popular books on Stoic philosophy such as The Obstacle Is the Way and Ego Is the Enemy. He was director of marketing at American Apparel and runs the Daily Stoic.
In 2014 he talked with Brian Rose about how online media can be manipulated, his work with clients such as American Apparel, Tim Ferriss and Robert Greene, and his turn to Stoicism. In 2016 he discussed writing Ego Is the Enemy and why founders may be unable to run what they create.
Start with Ego Is The Enemy from 2016 for his Stoic thinking. Watch Trust Me, I’m Lying from 2014 for his earlier work on media and marketing.
Twice: Trust Me, I’m Lying in 2014 and Ego Is The Enemy in 2016.
Trust Me, I’m Lying, published in 2012, is Holiday’s account of how he used blogs and online news to promote clients. He argues that the economics of online media reward speed and sensation over accuracy, which makes it easy to manipulate.
Ego Is the Enemy, published in 2016, argues that ego gets in the way at every stage of a career: when starting out, when successful and when facing failure. It draws on Stoic ideas and on stories from history.
Holiday presents Stoicism, the ancient philosophy of Seneca, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, as a practical guide to life: focus on what you can control, accept what you cannot and treat obstacles as opportunities to act well.
Official site: ryanholiday.net
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