Ryan Holiday
Author of Ego is the Enemy
Discussion
M
Ryan Holiday
@ryanholiday · Author, Ego is the Enemy
Hi, I'm Ryan Holiday, author (Trust Me I'm Lying, Growth Hacker Marketing, The Obstacle is the Way, Ego is the Enemy), college dropout, former director of marketing at American Apparel and owner of goats. I'm an advisor to startups like Beme, 15five, Vinyl Me Please and have invested in a couple others like Palantir and MeUndies. Happy to answer your questions here--Product Hunt has been very good to me over the last couple years--and chat about whatever you guys like.
upvotesharetweet・
COSTAS ANDRIOPOULOS
@candriopoulos · https://medium.com/strictly-curious
Dear Ryan, thank you for taking our questions today. What kind of tools do you use to research topics that you write about or startups to invest in?
M
Ryan Holiday
@ryanholiday · Author, Ego is the Enemy
@candriopoulos Research is really a matter of these activities: Reading widely. Watching widely (movies, documentaries, shows). Experiencing life (doing interesting things). Meeting widely (exposing yourself to interesting people). And then writing it all down/recording this information. You can live the most interesting life in the world, or have the smartest friends, but if you're not storing these experiences somewhere, they will be lost. Here's the system I use--given to me by Robert Greene--http://ryanholiday.net/the-notec...
Mark Davies
@mrmarkdavies · @MrMarkDavies
@ryanholiday @candriopoulos you could also try @wakelet for organising digital content! https://wakelet.com/
M
Ryan Holiday
@ryanholiday · Author, Ego is the Enemy
@mrmarkdavies @candriopoulos @wakelet I disagree. Take your digital content and make it analog. Don't just put things into the giant black hole of your computer.
Adnan Sabanovic
@adnanxteam · Web Developer, Thinker, Creator
Hi Ryan
Thank you for your time!
Can you please tell me about the process of validating new business ideas (in this case new products / features). What are the key steps that take you from an idea to going live?
What is your main metric during that process?
Thanks!
M
Ryan Holiday
@ryanholiday · Author, Ego is the Enemy
@adnanxteam The metric is always going to depend. Sometimes it's going to be email addresses (sign ups), other times it might just be votes in a survey. With my books, I use something harder to measure but still very essential: How does it play in dinner conversation? I'm looking to see if it can sustain a vigorous discussion with smart people. I look for the same when I write articles that might be leading to a book idea. Do people whose opinions I respect--who themselves have big audiences--share or interact with the content? The tea leaves are going to be different with each project.
Adam Muller
@muller_adam · Co-founder ADHD Collective, MullerCast
What are the most common circumstances and/or situations that reveal the ego?
M
Ryan Holiday
@ryanholiday · Author, Ego is the Enemy
@muller_adam Extreme success or extreme adversity. As Robert Caro says, power doesn't corrupt--it REVEALS. Same with failure--when we are at rock bottom--that's when we see who we really as are well.
Adam Muller
@muller_adam · Co-founder ADHD Collective, MullerCast
@ryanholiday Hmm, that Robert Caro quote is powerful. Really helpful. Thanks @ryanholiday, you rock.
Ben Tossell
@bentossell · Community Lead, Product Hunt
Hey Ryan! Still making my way through the latest podcast with @tferriss :)
Couple questions for you!
- If you had to swap lives with a tech CEO/Founder for a month, who would it be and why?
- Why goats? (and what are the weirdest animals you own - mini donkey sounds pretty interesting! - got a pic of them?!)
M
Ryan Holiday
@ryanholiday · Author, Ego is the Enemy
@bentossell @tferriss Because goats are the best. They are sweet, low maintenance and hilarious. I mean what other animal head butts trees for fun? What other animal is personally offended if another animal (or human) has manage to find a perch slightly higher than theirs? They're just really fun pets.
Emily Hodgins
@ems_hodge · Community and Marketing, Product Hunt
Ben Tossell
@bentossell · Community Lead, Product Hunt
@ryanholiday I can't fault your logic
so re my first question - a goat farm ceo?
Eric Schrenker
@ericschrenker · Head of Product, Invisible Girlfriend
Hi Ryan. I absolutely love your reading recommendation emails. I recently launched my own monthly newsletter on product development, entrepreneurship, and innovation. These are topics I love and know a great deal about. I've pushed it to my network and added a link to it everywhere that's relevant (bios on social media, in my email signature, etc.). I'm also starting to develop relevant blog content to support it. Do you have any advice to ensure I see continuous growth in subscriptions over the long run? Thank you!
M
Ryan Holiday
@ryanholiday · Author, Ego is the Enemy
@ericschrenker Stay at it. Here is a chart showing the growth of my newsletter: 
As you can see, it was almost four years before it really began to accelerate rapidly. That's what it took to develop a loyal audience and to build an addiction that people were willing to spread to others.
As you can see, it was almost four years before it really began to accelerate rapidly. That's what it took to develop a loyal audience and to build an addiction that people were willing to spread to others.
dave radparvar
@daverad · Co-Founder, Holstee
A lot of the benefits of mindfulness, stoicism, and the philosophies you help introduce people to through your writing are really important, and I believe, genuinely help people live happier and healthier lives - but they are not urgent or top of mind for most people. How can people in the mindfulness and wellness space better communicate the pain points of not living an intentional or reflective life?
M
Ryan Holiday
@ryanholiday · Author, Ego is the Enemy
@daverad I think they forget that most people are not interested in theoretical concepts. Personally, I love philosophy both practically and for its own sake. But I realize that that is a minority position. So if I want to discuss philosophy, I have to find the context in which the audience is willing to engage. That means going to them where they have problems (and where philosophy may offer real, practical solutions). Some of the critics of The Obstacle is the Way in the Stoic community completely miss this. They're made that I don't discuss "virtue" for instance. Well, most of the population--especially the ones who are dealing with some crisis or issue--are not waking up thinking, "Man, today I would sure love a lecture about virtue." Rather they think: "I have all these problems and I don't know what the fuck to do about them." So that's where I try to communicate.
I think there is a lesson here for startup founders too. It's not about what YOU like about a given industry or technology. It's about what users want. I think that's one of the mistakes we're going to see with VR and driverless cars. Your average person is not begging for their car to be replaced by a robot. So you have to figure out where the primary problem/opportunity is. Start there, and then grow.
Once I've hooked people on Stoicism as a solution to their problems and helped make a difference in their lives--then I can talk about all the other stuff it offers.
dave radparvar
@daverad · Co-Founder, Holstee
@ryanholiday really helpful and makes sense. thanks ryan!
Florian Wedowski
@florianwedowski · Growth & Filmmaker | Container Door
Yo Ryan,
How did you end up being Director of Marketing at AA at age 20 (I believe)?
And how does your way of doing marketing now differ to what you were doing at AA pre-Growth Hacker Marketing?
Cheers
Florian
M
Ryan Holiday
@ryanholiday · Author, Ego is the Enemy
@florianwedowski I was working for Robert Greene and Robert was on the board of directors. He recommended me to come in and advise Dov on some marketing/digital stuff they were working on. I did that and then he asked if I wanted to work there as a strategist. A year or so in, one of my projects was organizing/consolidating the marketing efforts which were spread across the different departments and not run super well. I did that and just sort of came into the role of director of marketing. It wasn't as if I was hired to do that or even officially given the position one day. It developed over time.
That's something people miss about opportunities. They don't always seem like one at the time. One has to be content to MAKE them into something. All you need a little bit of daylight to make a big move.
Florian Wedowski
@florianwedowski · Growth & Filmmaker | Container Door
@ryanholiday NICE! thanks mate :)
Koji K
@twelvejapan · Web/iPhoneApp dev/legal tech startup
Hi Ryan, thank you for your time! We're a very early stage startup and building an MVP. My question for you is: what kind of things should I care about while we're building the MVP? Thanks!
M
Ryan Holiday
@ryanholiday · Author, Ego is the Enemy
@twelvejapan 1) Is this something people actually want? 2) Is this something much much better than other products out there? (as opposed to having some marginal feature improvement that only matters to you) 3) Do you have a realistic plan for how you plan to draw attention to it ("We'll put it on Product Hunt" is not enough).
Michael Bilderbach
@mbilderbach · Product Designer
What insight about life have you acquired, that seems obvious to you, but might not be obvious to everyone else? Perhaps something outside of the stoicism philosophies.
M
Ryan Holiday
@ryanholiday · Author, Ego is the Enemy
@mbilderbach That almost everything is much more complicated and much more simple than you tend to think. If you can remember this, it not only makes you more empathetic but less prone to thinking you know more than other people.