3 keys to Discipline with Ryan Holiday

This week on the Colin and Samir Show, we interviewed author and philosopher Ryan Holiday

Ryan has been one of my favorite authors for a long time - he wrote a book about marketing, called Growth Hacker Marketing that I read 10 years ago, and it still informs the way I think about growing an audience and developing content?on YouTube.

Ryan shifted into writing about his true passion – stoicism. Stoicism is the belief that we can’t control or rely on external events but we can control ourselves and how we react to them.

Ryan is a prolific creator – he’s written 12 books in 10 years, and he writes two daily emails and hosts a daily podcast. Unlike most of our guests, he’s not a YouTube creator, so he thinks really differently than we do. That’s why we found this conversation so valuable

Here are 3 of my favorite takeaways from the episode –?

Creators need to live interesting lives.?

One of Ryan’s best pieces of advice is to live an interesting life, one that’s worth writing about. To be a writer, you need to have things to write about. The same goes for creators, and that’s a huge mistake Colin and I made early on. We locked ourselves in a studio and made videos there, and wouldn’t leave. We thought that to make it, we had to sit in that room and work. We equated hours in the studio as the route to success, when we should have focused on having more experiences that challenged us, and developed a point of view on life.

"No" is a complete sentence.

One of the hardest things about finding success is having to say no to the opportunities that come with it. Ryan has a brilliant mindset around protecting his time. Having space to write is his number 1 priority, so he says No to most things. So how does it do it? He ignores a lot of inbound messages, doesn’t justify why he’s saying no and has an agent to say no on his behalf.

The more you own your audience, the better off you are

Own your IP – and your distribution. Creators know that owning their content and their intellectual property is extremely important. But Ryan also raised the point about owning as much of your distribution and your audience as possible. That’s why he started a newsletter – on social platforms, there are layers between you and your audience, but he owns the email list of his newsletter. That’s why his goal across social platforms is to drive audiences to the newsletter.?

He also opened a bookstore near his home in Texas so that he could own the relationship between his book and his readers, instead of directing his audience to a different store. You can still purchase Ryan Holiday’s books in other places, but when you order directly from him he’ll sign the book. Think about it – usually, authors have no idea who bought their book. By owning his distribution, Ryan can market future books to people who have already bought his previous books.?

This episode is packed full of takeaways, especially for young creators. So listen and let me know what your favorite moments from the episode were. ?