Let Them Talk | The Discipline Nobody Talks About

Summary

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The Daily Stoic – "Let Them Talk | The Discipline Nobody Talks About"

Date: August 11, 2026
Host: Ryan Holiday
Guest: Cody Sanchez (Entrepreneur, Author of Main Street Millionaire)

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Episode Overview

This episode explores the often-misunderstood Stoic virtue of discipline—especially self-discipline—and its crucial role in business, leadership, and personal life. Ryan Holiday and guest Cody Sanchez, a successful entrepreneur, discuss what true discipline looks like, how it goes beyond sheer effort, and why restraint and boundaries matter as much as hard work. Together, they demystify glamourized entrepreneurship, reflect on scaling a business sanely, and consider how accountability and partnership shape long-term success.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Criticism, Control, and the Stoic Response

• Stoic Insight on Criticism:
  • Epictetus teaches us to accept criticism with humility. If people speak ill of us, "If they really knew me, they'd have said something even worse." (Ryan Holiday, [00:00])
  • Key Point: Focus on the work, not what others say. Learn from criticism if valid, otherwise let it go.

2. Discipline: More Than Just Hard Work

• Discipline in All Arenas:
  • Discipline is required everywhere—"It's not just working hard. It's not just abstaining. It's staying on the path that you're supposed to be on." (Ryan Holiday, [04:32])
  • Self-Discipline: When you work for yourself, you are responsible for setting and enforcing your own standards.
  • Consistency Over Motive: "A business isn't built in bursts of enthusiasm or motivation. It's largely built on consistency." (Ryan Holiday, [05:11])

3. The Entrepreneur’s Work Ethic & Example

• Modeling Discipline:
  • "Your team, like children, will not listen to what you say. They will watch what you do and then do a little bit less than that." (Cody Sanchez, [09:23])
  • "You have to be the ultimate standard in your business." (Cody, [09:15])
  • Many want success, but few want the requisite “boring, mundane work” over the long term.
  • Example of Elon Musk’s extreme approach—sleeping on the factory floor ([10:40]); Sanchez notes this is not everyone’s ideal, nor should it be.

4. Two Sides of Discipline: Drive and Restraint

• Saying No & Restraint:
  • "Discipline isn't just, I work harder, I sleep less, I push my boundaries more. It's also the restraint to go, this is what we're doing this year. No more and no less." (Ryan Holiday, [15:25])
  • "The dream was not to have a chain of bookstores...that's the culmination of that particular ambition." (Ryan, [15:54])
  • Cody: "If you want to win, you have to say no to so much it feels uncomfortable." (Cody Sanchez, [18:16])

5. Defining Success and Avoiding “Hustle Porn”

• Quality of Life vs. Hustle Culture:
  • "We have really started to obsess on this trauma bonding around being an entrepreneur." (Cody Sanchez, [13:53])
  • "My life's pretty fucking rad...it's really sweet to be an owner of business." (Cody, [14:35])
  • There's value in building a manageable business that fits your life, not just in chasing scale.

6. The Power of Team and Delegation

• Disciple-Making and Scaling:
  • "You have to hold your own boundaries and then you've got to bring along other people who are super disciplined. You are disciples in your same discipline." (Cody, [17:13])
  • Scaling requires letting go of control—discipline is also about sharing and delegating, not doing everything yourself.

7. Boundaries, Time, and True Value

• Time vs. Money:
  • "There's an infinite amount of money in the world and a finite amount of time. And which do you value more?" (Ryan Holiday, [18:49])
  • Avoid endless delayed gratification; don’t “miss the whole point” of success by never enjoying it.

8. Partnership and Accountability

• Role of Marriage and Trusted Partners:
  • "One of the most useful things I ever did to have better discipline about enjoying life...is getting married." (Cody, [19:34])
  • A partner isn’t just a cheerleader but a check—a reality tether and a balance to your ambitions. "You don't need encouragement. You have plenty of that." (Ryan, [21:19])
  • "If all you do is row a left oar on a boat, you go in a circle. You have to row left and then right and then left and then right. And that is the beauty of partnership." (Cody, [21:54])

9. The Value of a Board and Outside Advisors

• Peer and Mentor Guidance:
  • "You need this group of peers around you sometimes... advisors, and then... people that are like 10 or 20 years ahead of you." (Cody, [22:35])
  • A board (formal or informal) provides vital reality checks, prevents rash decisions, and is part of sustainable growth.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Self-Discipline and Leadership:
  • “No one is fit to rule who is not first ruler of themselves.” – Seneca, quoted by Ryan Holiday ([12:32])
• On Consistent Effort:
  • "Business to me more than anything else in life is who can handle doing the most monotonous, boring things for the longest period of time, far past when is reasonable or when you could at all want to." – Cody Sanchez ([09:58])
• On Boundaries and Restraint:
  • "Discipline...is also the restraint to go, this is what we're doing this year. No more and no less." – Ryan Holiday ([15:25])
• On Success and Lifestyle:
  • "Can't you be really quite successful running a business that does a couple million dollars a year doing it your way?...you are in charge and the CEO is on the door and that's your name. But you simultaneously still get to go to the kids events and you still get to have your activities. And I think that is totally doable." – Cody Sanchez ([14:36])
• On Partnership:
  • "The spouses that sign up for that, they need a medal too...my husband...is also the very first one to say life is way bigger than this and he has actually seen life or death." – Cody Sanchez ([20:29])
• On Boards and Guidance:
  • “The board of directors…their job is to be like, that's not a good idea. You need that.” – Ryan Holiday ([21:57])

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Timestamp | Topic/Quote | |---------------|----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 00:00–02:00 | The Stoic view of criticism; Epictetus on not reacting to what others say | | 04:30–06:00 | The deeper meaning of discipline in all areas of life | | 09:12–11:20 | Cody on modeling work ethic, business as monotonous duty; Elon Musk as example | | 12:32–13:50 | Ryan on self-discipline as leadership; Seneca quote | | 14:36–15:25 | Cody on enjoying business without “hustle porn” narrative | | 15:25–16:54 | Ryan on restraint: discipline as saying no, defining success, and refusing distractions | | 17:13–18:16 | Cody on scaling with teams, not solo; myth of solo billion-dollar business | | 18:49–19:34 | Ryan and Cody on time vs. money, not sacrificing living for endless work | | 19:34–21:22 | Cody and Ryan on marriage, partnership, needing checks, not just enablers | | 21:54–22:55 | The necessity of a board/advisors, blending support and challenge |

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Practical Takeaways

• Let go of what you can’t control—focus on your work, not on others’ gossip or criticism.
• Discipline is more about consistency and restraint than raw effort; learning to say no is vital.
• Leadership means modeling standards, handling the unglamorous parts, and building teams of ‘disciples.’
• Success doesn’t require misery—redefine your win, setting boundaries that allow life outside work.
• Partnerships, whether in marriage or business, provide needed checks and reality—don’t only seek cheerleaders.
• Mentors, peers, and boards—even informal ones—speed up growth and prevent avoidable mistakes.

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For more Stoic wisdom and practical lessons, check out Cody Sanchez’s Main Street Millionaire, Ryan Holiday’s writings, or join the ongoing Epictetus deep-dive at DailyStoic.com.

Transcript

[Ryan Holiday]

Welcome to the Daily Stoic podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world. Let them talk. You have work to do. Somebody at work is talking behind your back. Your cousin made a comment about your parenting. A critic writes something negative about your business. This hurts, feels unfair. It can have real consequences. But you know what? According to Epictetus, you got off easy. If anyone tells you that someone is speaking ill of you, he writes, tell yourself, if they really knew me, they'd have said something even worse. By the way, we're doing a deep dive in Epictetus this month. We'd love to have you join us. We're doing this awesome course. You can get a copy of Epictetus work and take this module, and then we're going to be doing a live session at the end of it. I'd love to see you in there. I'll link to it in the show Notes. But the point is, we all have flaws. There are things we could do better. And if anything, a real critic would be harsher. If our boss saw everything we did while we were clocked in, if people saw us when we lost it on our kids, they'd really have something to talk about. If there's a point to the criticism, let's learn from it. If it's off base, then what do we care? It's not in our control what other people say. It doesn't affect us either way. We don't have to take the bait. We don't have to stew. Let them talk. We have work to do. It would be wonderful if Epictetus was as popular as Marx, Aurelius, but he simply is not. And he's intimidating to people and therefore a little bit more obscure. Well, we wanted to solve that, and that's what we're doing with our how to Read Epictetus, a Daily Stoic digital guide. We're diving all into it, and we're gonna be doing a live Q and A call about it with thousands of other Stoics all over the world. I'd love to see you in there on August 27th, but that means you gotta sign up by the 26th. You can get a copy of Discourses for 50% off. As I said, his work changed my life. I think it'll change your life, and I can't wait to see you in there. Just go to daily stoic.com epictetus to find out more and we'll get into it. Talk soon. Over 70% of Americans are chronically dehydrated and 90% don't get enough potassium, a key electrolyte responsible for energy, muscle function and clear thinking. That's why so many people are tired, foggy, crampy, or even off even though they're drinking tons of water. I'm down at the beach with my family in Florida. I've been running in the morning, walking the dog, going to the beach I like. Just can't get hydrated. I just can't. It's just so hot. I'm doing so much. I can't get hydrated on water alone. And that's where Instant Hydration comes in. It is a premium electrolyte drink mix designed to support hydration, energy recovery, focus and overall performance without sugar or unnecessary additives. I've been drinking the strawberry lemon one, just putting in my water bottle, taking it with me, sipping on it throughout the day. It's not super sweet, salty, it's just easy to drink. Instant Hydration is made to be an electrolyte drink you can enjoy every day, not just after intense exercise. For a better way to stay hydrated, go to instant hydration.com stoic and use promo code stoic for over 40% off your first subscription order. It's Instant Hydration's best offer available. That's instant hydration.com stoic promo code stoic they say that every day your business is late to AI, you fall two days behind. And at Daily Stoic, actually, in our staff meetings every week, we sit down and talk about how we can use AI to maximize our efficiency, how we can use it to check our work, how we can get better. It's not about replacing people, it's about getting better at what we do, improving our workflows. And if you're not having these conversations with your team, you are late and you're getting later by the day. If you're lost when it comes to how AI can help your business, well, there's NetSuite next. You probably know NetSuite. It's the AI powered business management suite that securely connects all your data. And it's a unified suite that brings your financials, inventory, commerce, HR and CRM into a single source of truth trusted by over 43,000 customers. And Netsuitenext is the next huge leap in how business gets done. Because AI is built into everything you do, it automatically surfaces custom insights. Throughout your day. AI agents work alongside to help you solve problems and handle routine work. And anytime you have a question, you just ask. Just like having a conversation with a colleague. NetSuite is customized for a wide variety of industries, so it supports the way your business truly works, whether that company earns millions or even hundreds of millions of dollars. It's time for NetSuite Next. For the first time ever, you can try NetSuite Next for free. If your revenues are at least in the seven figures, go to netsuite AI Stoic. It's built for every industry, ready for every boardroom. Netsuite AI Stoic. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic podcast. I think it's hard to find a domain, a practice, a craft, an industry, a job where discipline isn't important. You need it on the way up. You need it when things are good. You need it when things are hard. You need it when things are going real fast, and you need it when things are going real slow. It's not just working hard. It's not just abstaining. It's staying on the path that you're supposed to be on. It's not being distracted. It's not being provoked. It's keeping your expenses, your needs in line. It's all that, right? And sure, a lot of things require discipline, but oftentimes that discipline is enforced on you, right? You know, the drill sergeant yelling at you, the coach or the boss telling you what to do. But when you work for yourself, yourself, you are your own boss. No one is enforcing that discipline on you. You have to enforce it on yourself. And that's really the virtue as it pertains to stoicism. We're talking about self discipline. And so I wanted to talk about discipline today, and I wanted to talk about its connection to the business world, entrepreneurship. And I think it's essential in business because a business isn't built in bursts of enthusiasm or motivation. It's, I think, largely built on consistency. It's doing the boring things well. It's about staying locked in. It's about hanging in there for the long haul. It's also about modeling this discipline for the other people in the team. A couple of months ago, I had Cody Sanchez out. She's an entrepreneur and an investor. She wrote a book called Main Street Millionaire. And she built this really interesting career and platform around buying businesses, usually kind of like small businesses, Main street businesses, not like private equity in the let's buy a big company and sell it for parts, but actually let's buy a bunch of little businesses in a town and turn them into something. Build a portfolio of businesses that do real things for real people. And so we wanted to talk about the discipline required to be successful at whatever it is that, that you are doing. I've talked about this before, like when we opened the Painted Porch or we started opening the Porch. We started construction in March of 2020. So we needed a lot of discipline. We needed a lot of perseverance because it got much harder than we thought it was going to be very quickly. But then as it succeeded, it's required different kind of discipline, a different kind of hanging in there, not hanging on for dear life. But, hey, what do we want to do more of? What do we want to do less of? What's moving the needle, what's draining us? You know, people come and, hey, you should open a second location. Nope, we're not going to do that. Right. This is, I think, another side of discipline that people don't talk enough about. And it's what Cody and I are talking about in today's episode. And I think you'll really like it. As I said, you can check out her book, Main Street Millionaire. We have the same publisher. It's a great little book. She signed copies while she was here at the Painted Porch. Probably seen her YouTube videos. Cody Sanchez CT, maybe on TikTok. Cody Sanchez or on Instagram, odysanchez. And let's get into it. The next virtue for the Stoics is this idea. Sometimes it's rendered as temperance, which is moderation. I prefer to see it as self discipline or self sort of ownership in the sense of being in command of your emotions, your desires, your urges, your. Your envy, all of these things. So talk to me about why that's an important skill as a business owner.

[Cody Sanchez]

Well, the business will fall to your level of activity, not your level of desire. And so you have to be the ultimate standard in your business. And your team, like children, will not listen to what you say. They will watch what you do and then do a little bit less than that. And so that is the hard truth. And so if you want to win in business, you have to be unreasonable in your level of activity, at least for quite a while, so that your team aspires to a level that is less than that. And that is, by the way, very reasonable for them, because they don't have all the upside that you do. So you're always going to work harder and care more than most of your employees. Now, the great employees, the ones that I turn into partners over time, are the ones that care just as much as I do. And then I want to travel through time with them. But I find that a lot of People want to get into business or want to be really successful with money, but they aren't willing to do the absolute boring, mundane work that is the game of business. Like business to me more than anything else in life is who can handle doing the most monotonous, boring things for the longest period of time, far past when is reasonable or when you could at all want to. And if you can do that, you'll actually be really, really successful. Because it's not the really bright moments. It is the moment again and again and again where I go to some of the people that I admire a lot in business at least, which would be like in Elon Musk who's like, I'm just going to sleep on the factory floor until I get this rocket built and I'm going to work right alongside you and we're going to stay in this misery.

[Ryan Holiday]

Yeah.

[Cody Sanchez]

And it's not my desired state to sleep on a factory floor, but it is.

[Ryan Holiday]

I would disagree. I think he creates a lot of the misery by being impulsive and emotional and by making somewhat irresponsible decisions which he then has to. I think he sometimes glamorizes the life of the grind. He calls it like demon mode or whatever. Whereas like someone with a hardcore more of a plan or more of a corporate structure around them or could delegate better, wouldn't have to do that. Yeah, but I get, I get your point. Which is like you got to do the work.

[Cody Sanchez]

I think it comes down to what do you want to build.

[Ryan Holiday]

Yeah.

[Cody Sanchez]

You cannot be corporate and take society to the moon and to Mars faster than the government and all corporate institutions and even beat Jeff Bezos.

[Ryan Holiday]

Right.

[Cody Sanchez]

Like Jeff Bezos to me also pretty driven. Yeah, is very driven, but probably much more corporate. Reasonable, time bound decision, hyper successful. Elon is in many ways not in my opinion as much of a business builder as he is a mission driven leader. So it is emotional and it is chaotic because nothing like that has ever been done before in history. But do I think you have to be Elon? No. In fact, I think it would be miserable to be him. I couldn't even imagine.

[Ryan Holiday]

I think you said it's pretty miserable to be him.

[Cody Sanchez]

Right. So I don't think you have to be that. In fact, I think you should love the business that you built. And because most people don't want to be him. Most people don't want to build billion dollar businesses building a billion dol. Our business is miserable. I mean, we're on the path and you know, our business is worth a couple nine Figures. And we do a lot of revenue a year and there are many days where it's miserable. But the one benefit I think, to the way we run businesses at least is because we are so systems oriented. You have what you just talked about, which is we just kind of know every single day what foot to put in front of the other, how to hire, how to train people and how to processize it. Where our self discipline clones in the organization.

[Ryan Holiday]

I just said it's like you crash the car in a ditch and then you rally the troops to pull it out of the ditch. I don't think you get credit for the long hours of pull. Like, I just spent Christmas pulling the car out of the ditch. It's like, okay, but you were drunk when you, when you drove it in there, and that's on you. Yeah. I do think there's this, there's this idea of people want to be their own boss. They want to be in charge. They want to control their own destiny. And I think they think that that somehow exempts them from like anyone getting to tell them what to do. And that's like, there's this line from Seneca where he says, no one is fit to rule who is not first ruler of themselves. And so they think, like, I think they think that being in charge running a big business is like, it's awesome because nobody's bossing you around, but it's actually, no, you have to be the boss of yourself. You have to boss yourself around. And you don't have the benefit of anyone checking in with you and going like, hey, did you, did you make sure to do that thing like, hey, did you get up early? Did you stay up late? Did you work harder than you want to work? And so there is this, I think, glamorization of working for yourself, being the boss, being the leader. And what people are forgetting is it's actually forcing you to do the job you were doing before and your boss's job, but just of yourself.

[Cody Sanchez]

Oh, yeah. I mean, I have two sides of the coin on this. I've really been thinking about it a lot lately. One side is if you want to be in charge, you are going to have to work harder than anybody else in your company for longer than anybody else. And there is no other way around it. You can also make more money than anybody else. You can probably have a bigger impact than anybody else. And you can see what you're actually made of. You can see what you're capable of. It's incredible. On the other hand, I think that we have really started to obsess on this trauma bonding around being an entrepreneur. And it's almost like it's so miserable and hard. And if you don't think it's miserable, you're lying and you're not in the game. And I'm a little bit lately, like, my life's pretty fucking rad.

[Ryan Holiday]

Yeah.

[Cody Sanchez]

And do I just have a baseline level of kind of happiness? Yeah. But also it's really sweet to be an owner of business and not in like hustle, you know, Lamborghini, Ferrari, private plane type, but in that you do get to be your own architect. And so, I don't know, I'm going back and forth with this real pushback to, can't you be really quite successful running a business that does a couple million dollars a year doing it your way? Maybe it's in a small town, maybe it's with a small team, but you are in charge and the CEO is on the door and that's your name. But you simultaneously still get to go to the kids events and you still get to have your activities. And I think that is totally doable. And we don't have to have this hustle porn misery addiction to trauma bonding over being an entrepreneur.

[Ryan Holiday]

There's two sides of the idea of discipline. So discipline isn't just, I work harder, I sleep less, I push my. My boundaries more. It's also the restraint to go, this is what we're doing this year. No more and no less. Right. Or these are the hours that I operate in. These are my priorities. One of the things you find when you have, like, we opened this bookstore a couple years ago, the first thing people do is like, are you going to open another one? No. The discipline to say the project was to do one thing and that this is what success on that thing is like now. It's not the end of my ambition. There's other things I want to do. But that's the culmination of that particular ambition and that reminding myself that my dream was not to have a chain of bookstores, which would be a distraction both from what I actually want to be doing and what I want my life to look like. And so you have to have the restraint to go, hey, I'm going to keep my head down. I'm going to do what I'm supposed to do. I'm not going to go to every conference that invites me. I'm not going to jump on every problem that comes up. I'm not going to do every interview that comes up. That was one thing that happens if you're a public facing person is you go, hey, I got here, I built this brand by jumping on every publicity opportunity, by doing every project and then go, I don't like that pitch. I'm going to let that pitch go by and I'm going to wait until there's one I can really get behind. And that requires restraint. It's this two sides of like drive and ambition, but then also restraint and a sense of what your limits are.

[Cody Sanchez]

Yeah, it's a great point. And also the discipline, like, if you want to be successful long term, I'm pretty sure you can't do it by yourself. I know that now. Lots of people will say, well, there's a billion dollar business built with one person and that's going to happen. I think that that is fake and I do not believe that and I do not think that will ever be true.

[Ryan Holiday]

That's what you would tell a New York Times reporter because you want them to write a story about you.

[Cody Sanchez]

100%. Yeah. And would both know, because we've written titles before, like, that's just not reasonable. So like what you actually have to do is one, you have to hold your own boundaries and then two, you've got to bring along other people who are super disciplined. You are disciples in your same discipline. And so you know this idea and you talk about it all the time with the stoics, but of the great leaders of men. And so your best discipline, I always believe, is really pouring into your team and getting them to be these disciples that go out and do the things for you. Theoretically, if you actually wanted to, you could have a chain of a hundred bookstores, but you'd have to have an incredible team to make sure that Ryan could still write the books that tens of millions of people read as opposed to spending time on the invoices of the books in the stores. Right. And so I just.

[Ryan Holiday]

One, the discipline to bring people on is like so sharing. And like, if you're like, no, this is all for me. It's all about me. Like the discipline even to like let go of some of the control. These are all. We tend to think of discipline as working harder and doing more. And it's, it's much more subtle than that.

[Cody Sanchez]

Oh no. I mean, God, if you want to win, you have to say no to so much. It feels uncomfortable.

[Ryan Holiday]

Yes.

[Cody Sanchez]

And I do it non stop. Stop. I mean, the idea that doing more is going to make you win is, I think, why so many entrepreneurs are miserable because they have bought into the idea If I just do one more, I will become better, bigger, richer, et cetera. And in fact, it's usually, what are the 10 things you need to stop doing right now that are burning up time that you can't even picture? And what are the two things that if you did them, would make everything else meaningless? And if you find those, then you really win.

[Ryan Holiday]

Yeah. And the discipline to understand there's an infinite amount of money in the world and a finite amount of time. And which do you value more? What is the point of being successful if you can't use it to buy time and you can't use it to live the actual life that you want? There is this kind of insane, like, to be an entrepreneur, you have to have a good sense of delayed gratification, but you'll end up missing the whole point if you endlessly delay gratification. Right. Like, if you never get to enjoy it, if you're sort of in harness your. Your whole life, or if you're like, yes, it's miserable, I hate this thing, but at some point I'll sell it and then I'll be happy. You don't know that that's true. And you might not get to that. That point.

[Cody Sanchez]

It's actually a good, like, frame. That idea of, are you in harness or are you out, Are you free in the field or are you under plow? And. And I think, you know, if you're an entrepreneur and you're thinking about that, it's like, how much time do you actually spend under detention, you know, in that harness? And then how much time do you spend on long walks, on vacation? One of the most useful things I ever did to have better discipline about enjoying life, because that's not my natural state, is getting married. And like, I think partnership and marriage is one of the best ways possible

[Ryan Holiday]

to optimize by another person. They're like, what are you doing?

[Cody Sanchez]

Exactly.

[Ryan Holiday]

Yeah. This is crazy.

[Cody Sanchez]

Yeah. And it's, it's. Everybody talks about, oh, the old ball and chain, or they hold me back, or they. I go, that's the point.

[Ryan Holiday]

No, they tether. They also tether you to reality. You're sounding like an insane person right now. And then they're also saying, like, well, what about me? You know, what about, when are we going to live this life that you promised?

[Cody Sanchez]

Yeah. And so I actually think, I know that a lot of people today are like, well, you know, the best partner is the one that supports everything you do unequivocally, all the time. And being married to an entrepreneur is Such a blessing. No, it's not. Being married to an entrepreneur can be extremely miserable and, and extremely self focused. And the spouses that sign up for that, they need a medal too. And so, and my husband is in the game with me, but he is also the very first one to say life is way bigger than this and he has actually seen life or death. And to pull you out of the moment where you're obsessed about something like a P and L or a spreadsheet that you're not going to remember in

[Ryan Holiday]

50 years, chances are if you are driven, if you're talented, if you're successful, if you've built something, chances are you need more of a check than you do an enabler.

[Cody Sanchez]

That's so true. That's a good point. Actually.

[Ryan Holiday]

You don't need encouragement. You have plenty of that.

[Cody Sanchez]

Yeah, but that is sort of the advice I think by and large these days is that your person should agree with everything you do politically. They should agree to everything you do work wise. They should support both unequivocally. And if they don't do that, then they're holding you back. They can't see your vision. They're not a real partner. And I think we have to kind of question that and go, is that true or is this person actually the person who's going to allow you things go a lot faster? We call them the two oars at my company. But if all you do is row a left oar on a boat, you go in a circle, you have to row left and then right and then left and then right. And that is the beauty of partnership.

[Ryan Holiday]

People think you want a board of directors that lets you do whatever you want. You think you want complete corporate control and that tends historically not to go. Well, that's actually not the role of the board of the directors. The board of directors, yes, it's a committee. And committees can be shortsighted, but committees do tend to prevent you from driving off of a cliff or burning yourself out or doing something that is illegal or, you know, very irresponsible. Their job is to be like, that's not a good idea. You need that.

[Cody Sanchez]

So funny. We actually we created something called the boardroom at Conturrent Thinking. And the reason why is because I needed in my business a group of people around a boardroom who would help me make non stupid decisions and talk me out of the singular focus I can have when I am driven. And we started it because I didn't want to give away equity in the company. I didn't want a real board. And I was scared of the downside of boards, which is that they can be non incentive alive, conservative, blah blah blah. So I wanted somebody who I could listen to but couldn't run everything for me like I was the skin in the game. Because I realized most entrepreneurs, they don't have that. I mean, your friends are often your competitors. So you have to be a little careful of that. You know, your family is sometimes a little tired of hearing from it. Your employees are going to tell you what you want to hear or they're going to tell you what is the least amount of work for them. And so you need this group of peers around you sometimes. I really think you need, you need peers, you need advisors, and then you need people that are like 10 or 20 years ahead of you. And with those three things, you can just move faster because you can steal people's 10,000 hours. When you're a maintenance engineer in a beverage manufacturing plant, you keep production lines moving and quality on track because there

[Ryan Holiday]

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[Cody Sanchez]

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