Ryan Holiday on Opening a Bookstore During a Pandemic

Tracy Alloway (0:10)

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway.

Joe Weisenthal (0:15)

And I'm Joe Weisenthal.

Tracy Alloway (0:17)

So Joe, I feel like we're definitely still working through the economic reverberations of the coronavirus crisis, right? We've had this massive recovery, but it still feels like there's further to go.

Joe Weisenthal (0:31)

Yeah, I mean, absolutely. I mean, it seems like in many respects, like some of the sort of business disruption, supply chain issues, it's not obvious that they're getting better.

We talk a lot about shipping and logistics, and at least by some measures, for example, that's actually still as worse as it's ever been today than at any point in the crisis.

Tracy Alloway (0:52)

Yeah, so we're still working through various forms of gridlock in the supply chains as we've been talking about quite a lot on Odd Lots. But I feel like there's also these sort of deep scars on the business environment from the past year. It goes back to that question, I guess we've discussed it on the supply chain episodes, but what do businesses do about investment? Are they confident enough to start reopening, to really put a bunch of money in expansion, or is everyone gonna be nervous for a long time that you could get a third wave or some sort of Delta variant, something like that, that could come in and I guess surprise everyone again?

Joe Weisenthal (1:32)

Exactly right. You know, I think like a lot of businesses were clearly designed for a sort of like predictable pre-pandemic like patterns, right? And some things have like going back to normal and it's like, okay, like people are going out to eat again and it looks like people are starting to go to movie theaters again, though I don't know if it's enough to justify AMC's stock price, but people are going back to movie theaters again and so forth, but obviously like things are just different.

And so certain types of businesses or certain types of behaviors are gonna be different and certain types of businesses are gonna be affected positively and some negatively.

Tracy Alloway (2:09)

Yeah, so on that note of things being different, one thing I wanted to do was talk to a specific business, like a single small business to try to get a feel of what the past year was like and how they're now looking at the future.

And I thought what could be really interesting is to look at a business that already has its challenges, even without the pandemic. So today we're going to be talking to a very, very famous author and someone who recently started their own brick and mortar bookstore in Austin, Texas. And they actually opened that store during the pandemic. And Joe, I know you follow the Texas news very closely, but there were also all sorts of weather related events that would have made the past year even more painful for a new business.

Joe Weisenthal (3:01)

Yeah, absolutely, I mean, I think in the last few months, Texas has had both a historic freeze and a historic heat all in a short period of time, stretching a pretty, you know, that added to grid strain. I mean, we saw like the crazy like freeze, I think it was back in March.

So just one thing on top of another.

Tracy Alloway (3:22)

Yeah, exactly. So today we're gonna be digging into all those various challenges from the perspective of an actual small business owner. And I am very pleased to be introducing our guest on this episode. It is the author Ryan Holiday and now the proprietor of The Painted Porch. So Ryan, thank you so much for coming on.

Ryan Holiday (3:41)

Yeah, thanks for having me. You're right. It's difficult to have a business during a pandemic.

I think opening during the pandemic was so much harder because you were completely flying blind. Like you had no idea whether it would work under ordinary circumstances. And then it was like, are people ever going to be in the same room with each other ever again? That was like the level of like questioning your bedrock assumptions about reality that we had to think about a lot over the last 15 months.

Tracy Alloway (4:14)

So walk us through the timeline here then, like when did you start thinking about opening a bookstore and why, and at what point did you actually start doing it? And how did that clash with the pandemic?

Ryan Holiday (4:27)

It seems like an eternity ago, but I was in the fall of 2019, I was, we lived near a small town called Bastrop, which is right outside Austin. I was sitting in a restaurant with my wife in this small main street, and we looked out across the street and there was an empty building that had been closed forever. And my wife said, you know, what would be great there? A bookstore. And I said, that sounds crazy, but for some reason we ended up like getting excited about the idea.