Ryan Holiday

Ryan Holiday dropped out of the University of California, Riverside at nineteen and moved to Los Angeles, where he began working as a research assistant to Robert Greene, author of The 48 Laws of Power. From there he became Director of Marketing at American Apparel, a role that put him at the center of some of the most talked-about (and most studied) marketing campaigns of the era, before he left in 2014 to start his own firm. That same year, he published The Obstacle Is the Way, the book that introduced practical Stoic philosophy to a new generation of readers, from Silicon Valley entrepreneurs to professional sports locker rooms. Ego Is the Enemy followed in 2016, and The Daily Stoic, a book of daily meditations, became the foundation for what is now Daily Stoic: a media platform reaching hundreds of thousands of people through a daily email, a podcast, and a growing library of video content. Over the past decade, Ryan built out what is now a complete body of work: a four-book "Stoic Virtues" series, one book for each cardinal Stoic virtue, starting with Courage Is Calling (2021), Discipline Is Destiny (2022), and Right Thing, Right Now (2024, an instant #1 New York Times bestseller), and closing with Wisdom Takes Work in 2025. Across sixteen books, his work has sold more than ten million copies in over 40 languages. In 2021, Ryan and his wife opened The Painted Porch Bookshop in Bastrop, Texas, a small-town independent bookstore he built and still personally curates on his own ranch outside Austin. It's become as much a part of his public identity as his books: proof, in his words, that the same patient, disciplined principles he writes about apply to building something real and lasting, not just writing about it. Today, Ryan speaks to a genuinely wide range of audiences, from corporate leadership teams at companies like Google and Nike, to professional and collegiate sports organizations, to military audiences, bringing the same core message wherever he goes: that the obstacles you face aren't the exception to a good life or a good career, they're the material of it.