Here's the thing I've learned about ideas: It's your job to have them.
— Ryan Holiday
The greats - they protect their sleep because it's where the best work comes from. They say no to things. They turn in when they hit their limits. They don't let the creep of sleep deprivation undermine their judgment.
It's your job to find a release and an outlet for the stress and the feelings. Never forget: the crazy stays at home.
Philosophy is not just about talking or lecturing or even reading long, dense books. In fact, it is something men and women of action use - and have used throughout history - to solve their problems and achieve their greatest triumphs. Not in the classroom but on the battlefield, in the forum, and at court.
My advice to young people would be this: Don't move to New York. It is not where you will find yourself.
Dr. Drew Pinsky changed my life.
There has to be something about your business that gets you excited. Otherwise, you probably wouldn't have spent your precious - irreplaceable - time on it.
Growth hacking is the future of marketing. It has to be.
Watching well-meaning authors follow in the footsteps of someone going in the wrong direction breaks my heart.
I love books. Probably too much for my own good.
We need to separate marketing messages from content. We need to enforce a clear line between 'editorial' and 'advertising.'
Our facts aren't fact; they are opinions dressed up like facts. Our opinions aren't opinions; they are emotions that feel like opinions. Our information isn't information; it's just hastily assembled symbols.
The process for finding, creating, and consuming information has fundamentally changed with the advent of the web and the rise of blogging.
Virality, at its core, is asking someone to spend their social capital recommending or linking or posting about you for free.
What I've found in my research is that realism and self-honesty are the antidote to ego, hubris, and delusion.
My neighbors don't care that I'm an author. It's inherently ego-inhibiting.
Stoicism is a philosophy designed for the masses, and if it has to be simplified a bit to reach the masses, so be it.
My parents disagreed sharply with me over the decision to leave school.
We only have so much energy for our work, for our relationships, for ourselves. A smart person understands this and guards it carefully. Meanwhile, idiots focus on marginal productivity hacks and gains while they leak out energy each passing day.
When I dropped out of school at 19 to start my first job in Hollywood, I didn't know anything, and I had no idea where I'd end up. Thankfully, I was attached to some smart and forgiving people who let me learn under them.
In Los Angeles and other cities, being around immigrants is inspiring. They are touching the American Dream and reminding you how much you take it for granted.
Like pretty much every other ambitious person, I always figured I'd eventually move to New York. It is, at this point, half-dream and half-obligation for people trying to do big things. It's the American Dream inside the American Dream.
If you run a business that isn't cutting edge or doesn't naturally stick out of the crowd, it's your job to be different and get attention.
The problem with a lot of marketing advice is that the examples they use are not exactly typical. It's hard for businesses, particularly smaller businesses, to relate to the bold innovations of companies like Apple or Tesla.
Self-imposed discipline with a bent towards results rather than 'creative' and sustainability spending is unfortunately not the norm in the marketing industry.
As authors, we're all trying to fight against obscurity and outside distractions, but it's a tough battle.
Writing the perfect paper is a lot like a military operation. It takes discipline, foresight, research, strategy, and, if done right, ends in total victory.
The media, when it's functioning properly, protects the public against marketers and their ceaseless attempts to trick people into buying things.
I made a lot of money and had a great time playing with the words that make up the news. I exploited the laziness behind the news and people's reading habits.
Virality is not an accident. It is engineered. And that's why growth hackers beat traditional marketers.
Growth-hacking is about scalability - ideally, you want your marketing efforts to bring in users, which then bring in more users.
Because we make ourselves deaf to feedback, because we overestimate our abilities, because we become consumed with ourselves, we end up subjecting ourselves not just to the inevitable stumbles or difficulties of life but catastrophic, painful failures.
The essential idea of Stoicism in my interpretation is, you don't control the world around you, you control how you respond. At 19, that's very empowering.
In 2007, I went to work in Beverly Hills as an intern at The Collective, a talent management agency. I'd been scouted for the job because of a blog I'd started in college and because the blogger-turned-author I worked for, Tucker Max, was producing a project with the company.
When work impedes on sleep, poor planning is to blame - not superior will power.
Stoicism - and philosophy - are not the domains of idle professors. They are the succor of the successful and the men and women of action.
Don't move to New York. Find your own city and your way.
The reality is that the economic situation for millennials is not a good one.
People love stories; they use stories to make sense of the world.
Growth hacking is a mindset, and those who have it will reap incredible gains.
Growth hackers don't tolerate waste.
I know how hard authors work on their books and how far out of their element many are when it comes to doing the sales and marketing. So when I see someone doing it wrong and giving bad advice, I do my best to help - even when they're not my clients.
Brands are essentially forbidden from saying or associating themselves with the Olympics - something that has been commonly owned by Western Civilization since the Greeks - unless they hand over piles of cash to the Games.
Public relations and marketing are something companies do to move product. It is not meaningful. It is not cool. Yet because it is cheap, easy, and lucrative to cover, blogs want to convince you that it is.
As I discovered in my media manipulations, the information that finds us online - what spreads - is the worst kind. It raised itself above the din not through its value, importance, or accuracy but through the opposite: through slickness, titillation, and polarity.
Growth hackers are typically computer engineers that build great marketing ideas into the product during the development process.
You can't believe your own marketing.
Life is hard, but we make it much harder.
If you're shameless enough, you can sell anything.
