Ryan Holiday on The Economics of Book Writing, Why You’re Monetizing Your Media Business All Wrong, His Split with Tucker Max, and More

**Sam Parr** (0:00)
All right, there's this amazing book called Getting Everything You Can Out Of All You've Got. I read it a few years ago and it changed my life.
And the reason I loved it was because it basically talks about how to get and make more money using things that you already have.
Coincidentally, today's podcast is brought to you by Business Made Simple. It's a podcast by Donald Miller, who I'm gonna tell you about in a second, but he has this amazing episode that's all related to this book and the things that I learned in this book. It's called How To Make Money With What You Already Have. It's an incredible episode. It talks about all the stuff that I learned in this book. The host is Donald Miller. I didn't know who Donald Miller was up until recently, but over the last 12 months, this is totally by coincidence. It was all separate people. They said, you have to check out Donald Miller. He's amazing. So I'm happy that he's part of HubSpot's podcast network. You can check it out, Business Made Simple Podcast. It's where he coaches you on how to build your business like an airplane, where the cockpit is your leadership, the body is your overhead, the right engine is your marketing, the left engine is your sales.
You have to check it out. This guy's amazing. It's called, Business Made Simple with Donald Miller.

**Shaan Puri** (1:02)
What do you do with your money? I know you got a ranch.
I think you lived there.

**Sam Parr** (1:08)
He's had that forever.

**Ryan Holiday** (1:09)
I mean, that was like my house. So it's not like, it wasn't like a luxury property or whatever.

**Shaan Puri** (1:15)
It's not like Kanye having a ranch in Wyoming. You actually live there because you wanted to live there. Sam, I think has some similar aspirations.
But what do you do? Are you like, I'm an investor. You just do something boring with your money. What do you do with your money?

**Ryan Holiday** (1:30)
Yeah, well, I spent a lot of it on this bookstore.
I bought two buildings in this small town of Bastrop.
Originally it was gonna be a bookstore and a coffee shop. Now it's a bookstore and I rent out half of it to a record store. But I wanted, I needed like a space to do all my stuff. So up top is like my office. My wife also wanted me to take all my books out of our house. So that was part of it. It was like getting all the shit out. But no, I don't really do anything. I don't really do anything with it. I just invest it. I like investing in things that are very different than internet things. So most of it's like in income producing.

**Sam Parr** (2:21)
How do you describe yourself?

**Ryan Holiday** (2:22)
You know, I don't do it very well.
You nailed, I would sort of, if I had to say, what do I identify as? I would say, I identify as a writer. And then I sort of have these other things that I do in, that are somewhat related and somewhat unrelated. But like, if I had to sort of only pick one thing or like, what do I feel like I was like meant to do? It's writing. So I identify first as that.

**Sam Parr** (2:49)
Shaan, do you remember this, did I ever show you this coin I used to carry around? I would have it with me a lot, particularly in the old San Francisco office. I had a coin.

**Shaan Puri** (2:56)
Do you remember? Two face of you. No, I've never seen your coin. What do you do with this coin?

**Sam Parr** (3:01)
No, it was, it said, what does it say? Momentous.

**Ryan Holiday** (3:04)
What does it say, Ryan?

**Sam Parr** (3:05)
Yeah, which means like, you're gonna die. You only live once, right?

**Shaan Puri** (3:09)
By the way, don't you love that? Sam carried it around for years. Doesn't know what it says on it.
Momentous.

**Sam Parr** (3:17)
I knew that it meant like you have to live today, like you're gonna die.

**Ryan Holiday** (3:21)
Yes.

**Sam Parr** (3:22)
Right?
And I was thinking about it. I bought one for $26 and I was thinking about it. I was like, this is the greatest business of all time. I just bought a, like a fake coin from Ryan for $26. It cost him, it was just probably a post, like a stamp just to mail it to me. So only 50 cents.
There's not gonna be any returns. There's no, it's one size fits all.