Episode #55： The Warrior Ethos With Steven Pressfield
Episode Stats
Summary
Stephen Pressfield is a prolific writer, both fiction and nonfiction. He wrote The Legend of Bagger Vance, The Gates of Fire, and Tides of War. He s also written a lot of great nonfiction that s popular amongst entrepreneurs, creative types, where he applies the warrior ethos that he writes about in fiction to real life. In this episode, we talk about why Stephen writes about war, why he s drawn to the ancient Greeks, and how you can apply that to your creative life.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. Well, I am really
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excited about today's episode because I am talking with one of my favorite writers. His name is Stephen
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Pressfield. I know a lot of you are probably familiar with his work. A prolific writer, both fiction and
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nonfiction. He wrote The Legend of Bagger Vance. Stephen's also, the books that I've been devouring
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this year are the Gates of Fire series. They're fictional, historical accounts of, you know, the first
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one, Gates of Fire is about the Battle of Thermopylae with the Spartan 300. He did a book about the
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campaigns of Alexander the Great, and the one that I really enjoyed, Tides of War, about the Peloponnesian
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War. We're going to talk about that book today. He's also written a lot of great nonfiction that's
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popular amongst entrepreneurs, creative types, where he applies this warrior ethos that he writes in
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as fiction to real life. So, great stuff. We're going to talk about in today's episode why Stephen
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is drawn to writing about war, why he writes about war, why he's particularly drawn to the ancient
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Greeks. And we're also going to talk about the warrior ethos and how you can apply it in different
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aspects of your life, particularly the creative life, when you're trying to do something creative
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with your life, whether you're starting a business or pursuing a passion like writing. So, great stuff.
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I think you'll get a lot out of it. So, stay tuned. Just to give you a warning, we use some big boy
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language in this episode. So, if you are listening to this in your office cubicle, put some headphones
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on. If you've got kids, you don't want them to hear that sort of thing, just listen to it later.
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So, it's a fair warning. So, let's do this. All right. Well, Stephen Pressfield, welcome to the show.
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Hey, pleasure to be here, Brett. Thanks for having me.
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Well, I'm really excited because there's so much I want to talk about in just a short amount of time
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because you're writing, you're just a prolific writer. You write across genres, nonfiction,
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fiction, screenplays. And I think our readers are really going to enjoy talking or listening to you
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because you write a lot about war. That's a kind of a common theme, even in your nonfiction,
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fiction, your fiction, obviously. And even the legend of Bagger Vance, I would say.
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Yeah, that's actually kind of astute of you to pick that up. Most people would not get that. Yeah.
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Yeah. It sort of has a warrior motif in it. Yeah.
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So, my first question is, what draws you to war and warriorhood?
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Well, first of all, I'm not a combat veteran. I was like a reserve marine many, many moons ago,
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you know, but I've never been in combat or, you know, anything like that. So, I can't claim that
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it has anything to do with that. But I think that I see life as a battle. I see it, you know,
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from the minute I wake up in the morning, you know, trying to get my act together. And I see each day
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as a struggle to slay the dragons of, you know, self-sabotage and laziness and perfectionism and
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all the other stuff that, you know, screws us up all the time. And I also find that the virtues of
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a writer or the virtues that you need to succeed in the creative arts are, to me, the virtues of a
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warrior. The ability, patience, courage, the ability to endure adversity, sense of humor,
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respect for the enemy, that kind of thing. So, that's, you know, that's my best answer to it.
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But I really don't know. I mean, I just was sort of, you know, I worked as a writer for,
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or a struggling writer for probably 25 years before I wrote the first thing that was about war.
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I don't know why. And then I just sort of wrote another one and another one and another one. So,
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there's a certain mystery to the whole thing, unanswerable quality to it.
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Well, why? So, you have like this whole series about the Peloponnesian, you know,
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the Peloponnesian Wars. What draws you to like classical Greek culture and those wars that happened
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That's a good question, Brett. And here's the weird part of it, is that although I am drawn to
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Greece and very fascinated by that, I couldn't give a shit about Rome. And right, they're the same
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thing, basically, but I don't know why. So, maybe it's previous lives or something. But the other,
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I think that ancient Greece, particularly Athens and Sparta, are just like a fascinating sort of
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petri dish. They're kind of like our era, but on a much smaller scale, where things are clear,
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and you can kind of see it, you know? It's not as confusing as it is. And the other thing I love
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about ancient Greece is it's like pre-Freudian, pre-industrial, particularly pre-Freudian,
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pre-Christian, pre-Judaic, pre-all the crap that screws things up, you know? Pre-communist,
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pre-Fascist. And the ancient Greeks kind of had what I think is a really clear-eyed view of what
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human nature is about. I mean, they had a very, I won't say it was a dark view, but it wasn't dark
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to them. They just sort of saw it for the way it was. They knew that when people got pushed to the
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wall, they did some pretty, you know, bad things. So, and I just, I love the prose from those days,
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you know? If you read, I don't know if your readers are into this stuff, but if you read
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Thucydides, if you read Xenophon, if you read Plato, if you read Plutarch, it's just pellucid,
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clear, great prose that when you're finished reading it, you feel better about yourself instead of worse,
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And you just mentioned something that leads me to my next question I had. So you talk,
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you mentioned how the Greeks had this understanding of human nature that I don't think we really have.
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It's not very, they had a very nuanced understanding of human nature. They had like these, what I,
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they had these like concepts, right? Like words that described a feeling or a state,
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like for example, Thumos, right? And it's hard to describe in our vernacular because we don't have
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like a vocabulary for it. And what I love about your books is that you take these big Greek concepts
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about human nature and you make them like the main theme of your book and you weave that in
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throughout your novel. So for example, in The Virtues of War, right? About the campaigns of Alexander the
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Great, that Greek concept or virtue was dynamis. Yeah. Yeah. Can you explain dynamis to our
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listeners? And, you know, it's, you know, I'm not even sure I really understand. I have kind of
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my own idea. Yeah. I gave it a Greek word. Here's a little, I got to tell you a little confession
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before I do this. I have a friend who's a Greek named Hippocrates Kanzios. He's a professor down in
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Florida. And a lot, what I would do with my early books is I'd come up with kind of a press field
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concept and I'd send it to Hipp and I'd say, what's the Greek word for this? And he would come
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up with, you know, sometimes he even had to invent a word for it. But so I shouldn't tell you this,
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but that's, that's, that's the truth. But dynamis is just, you know, it's, it's close to eros in the
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sense of, uh, just to drive the will to win. It's really, you know, the art of manliness. It's that
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sort of masculine drive. And I don't just mean it in a, in a sexual or gender sense. It's, you know,
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the old concept of, uh, the sky God that shoots a bolt of lightning down to earth and earth is feminine
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and the sky God is, is masculine. That's kind of what it is. Um, but let me, before I forget this,
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let me say one other thing about why I like the, the Greek mentality. It's like a lot of the,
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the, the philosophies that we deal with today. And I was just mentioning Freudianism, communism and
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fascism and Christianity as well, have this idea of if we only do such and such, we will be saved.
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You know what I mean? It's like, if, if we're, if it's Freudian, it's, if I just get analyzed enough
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and solve the stuff in my head, then I'll be happy, you know, or Christianity. It's like,
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if I could just live like Jesus, if I could turn the other cheek, if I could love my fellow man,
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I would emerge to some higher level, right? Communism. It's the same thing. You know,
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the workers paradise, if we could just all, you know, work together, pull together, not compete
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with each other, but, and all of it is bullshit, right? I mean, nothing, nothing works. There's no
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upper level that you're going to get to in any of these things. And I think that the Greeks knew
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that, you know, and they weren't even, you know, that's why their gods were so human,
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right? The gods committed infidelities. They cheated, they lied, they, you know,
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screwed around on their partners and everything. And they were angry. They were crazy. And, uh,
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you know, I, I, I somehow, I love that, you know, and when sometimes I get, you know, uh, because my
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books are about Greece, a lot of them, I get a lot of letters from Greece, you know, from real Greeks
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today. And they'll say to me, our country's in the toilet. Well, you know, what can we do to,
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you know, how can we get out of it? And my answer is always forget Christianity, go back to the
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Olympian gods. That was when you guys had it together. And, uh, so I don't know, I don't think
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they're going to do it. You know, they're going to do it. Well, so you mentioned, um, like Sparta and
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Athens, how you, you, so there's sort of a microcosm of humanity. And one of the, I've been thinking
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about this a lot lately, since I read the tides of war, right? About the, the civil war between
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Athens and Sparta. And there's this great scene where the general, the Spartans, Lycurgus gets up
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and gives this rousing speech about the difference between the Spartans and the Athenians. And he says,
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the Spartans have Andrea and the Athenians have, I guess it's pronounced Thrastes or Thristes?
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Thracetis. Thracetis. Okay. Look at me. I'm not, I can't. So what else? If we had a real
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Greek here, we'd probably pronounce it. So what, what are the differences between those
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two virtues and which one do you resonate with personally?
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Ah, okay. And actually it was Lysander. Lysander. Okay. Excuse me.
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But I got to tell you, it's a great pleasure to be talking to somebody who's actually read my books
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and knows what the heck they are. But, uh, Lysander, the Spartan admiral, who was really kind of a bad
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guy in a lot of ways, a true character, was comparing Athens and Sparta. And he said that,
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that, uh, Sparta, this is all fiction, but I, but I'm sure it's true. Um, Spartans are brave,
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but Athenians are bold. And he makes a big, that's what Thracetis and Andrea are. And, and he makes a,
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um, a real distinction between the two and the, and the, the brave, this kind of plugs into the art
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of men, is the brave man. This is the Spartan is in, in Lysander's view, pious, humble, modest,
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long suffering. He's the kind of like an infantryman that can be on the front lines at 30 below zero,
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you know, with artillery rounds coming in every day, every, and just bears it, you know, and,
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and, and the brave man, according to Lysander, um, fears the gods, respects heaven,
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acknowledges that the human being lives on a lower level than the gods. And, and so is a, uh,
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has a certain becoming modesty to him. Now the bold person on the other hand, and he, Lysander,
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characterizes Athens as this, and I would say that I would characterize America in the same way,
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that, uh, that, uh, they're not, they're not brave as much as they are. Um, they're just willing to go
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balls to the wall on something. They come up with an idea, an outrageous idea, you know, ambitious,
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tremendous stunt, like, you know, invading a country that never did anything to us. And,
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and they pull it off. And boldness has a, has a tremendous, um, Alexander was really both of
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these. He was brave and bold, but boldness kind of carries the, the, the momentum of the enterprise
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can sometimes carry something through, even when it's not very well thought out, you know, like going
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to the moon or something like that. And so what Lysander was saying, and Lysander was putting this
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down. He was saying, boldness is not going to last boldness. He says, the, um, the man thinks of
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himself as God and kind of tries to, to, uh, to emulate the gods or to compete with the gods to,
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to, to have really, really ambitious stunts. And, uh, Lysander's point was the gods don't like that
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and they're going to bring these people down. So that's anyway, that was a, thank you for coming
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up with that. You're the only person that's ever noticed that yet. Well, I just, I mean,
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it was such a great scene. And the reason I resonated with, cause as I was reading that,
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it was, um, I kept on thinking back to, I was thinking, well, this sounds like Athens sounds
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like America today and kind of the values that we emphasize as a culture. Yeah. And it's funny
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cause like you read, you know, the founding fathers and while they admired Athens for their
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science and art, they really admired the Spartan civic virtue. And I think that Andrea or whatever,
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Andrea, which means manliness, um, the way you described it kind of exemplifies that civic
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virtue of the Spartans. It's long suffering. You're in it for the, you're playing the long game.
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Um, yeah. I mean, it's very well put. Yeah. Something I feel like I could use some more of in my own
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life possibly. And I think we could use some in our own culture, but here's the question. So
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I guess for you as a writer, um, you were talking earlier about, um, you know, the, the virtues of
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war and the virtues of warrior hood, um, helps you in your writing. So I guess you would say
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Andrea, is that how you pronounce it? And yeah, I think Andrea, is that the one that really resonates
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with you and gets you through your writing? That's, that's another great question. I think for,
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for any artist, I think you need both. You need the boldness to, uh, come up with a, with an idea
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that's really ambitious. You know, if you're going to write Moby Dick or Remembrance of Things Past or
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any, anything, if you're going to do Avatar, you know, not that that's great, but you know what I
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mean? It takes, you gotta have, you gotta be crazy enough to really go for it and really, uh, um,
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extend beyond your capacity. But at the same time, any kind of long-term work of art, like a novel
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or a, or a movie, you're in the trenches day after day after day with the rain beaten down on your
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head. And so you need Andrea there, and you do need a respect for the gods, for the muse, you know,
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that to, to, to not think that you're the one that's doing it. So I think you need both.
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And that's why I think Alexander the Great was such a, why he was able to conquer the world. He
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was both. He had balls of steel and, and, uh, but he also was capable of the long game. You know,
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he play, he, you know, he played it out for as long as he was breathing.
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Yeah. So yeah, this kind of segues nicely into talking about your nonfiction books. So you've
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written several nonfiction books that are very popular amongst writers, creative types, entrepreneurs.
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And one of the books I just finished reading is called Turning Pro. And you talk about in Turning
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Pro, the difference between an amateur and a pro. Can you talk about the difference between an amateur
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and pro? And here's a kind of segue back into Andrea and Thristies. If you're a pro, which virtue
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do you have? And if you're an amateur, which virtue do you have? That's another great question,
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Brad. I don't think that falls into that split. If you're a pro, I think you need both. And if you're
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an amateur, you don't have either one of them. You know, the difference to me, you know, there are
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many people who struggle to be, they have great, they want to write a novel or they want to do
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something in the arts or some, you know, some long-term project and they can never quite get it
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together. And I was that way for years and years and years. I would start something, take it 99% of the
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way through and then crash. And to me, the insight that sort of turned the corner for me was realizing
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that I was an amateur, that I was, you know, when adversity hit, I didn't have the guts to stick it
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out. You know, I didn't have the patience, all those warrior virtues, right? I suppose amateur to pro is
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the difference between non-warrior and warrior. But, you know, a professional is somebody, if you think
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of a professional athlete that knows how to play hurt, that shows up every night that, you know,
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when, when there's no glamour involved in it, is still there doing the work, you know, putting,
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you know, doing the shoot around, putting up the shots, taking care of, uh, turning pro, the book is
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about the moment of changing from an amateur into a pro, even if it's only in your own mind, you know,
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forgetting about the money aspect of it. Yeah. And you talk about through all these books and
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turning pro and in your other works that the thing that keeps people from turning pro is what you call
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resistance with a capital R. Um, can you explain, I'm sure you've answered this question lots of
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times on these types of podcasts, but what is resistance? Uh, well, resistance is, uh, to me,
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I experienced it right now. I'm sitting here at my desk and here's my keyboard. Can you see that?
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Oh yeah. I can see it. And, uh, here's my, I'm looking right at my computer. When I get, when I
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come to sit down here, there's a force that's radiating off of this keyboard that says, don't do
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the work. Go have a hot fudge Sunday, go to the beach, you know, fuck off. You know, that's resistance.
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If you've ever bought a treadmill, as I say, in a war of art and brought it home and let it gather
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dusk in the attic, then that, you know, resistance is. So you were saying before, Brett, about, uh,
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how, why do I write stuff about war? Well, to me, the enemy is this force that I call resistance with
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a capital R and it's inside ourselves. And it's the force, all the forces that will keep us from
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becoming our best self, from getting our PhD, from starting that business, from, you know,
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creating, you know, the art of manliness or whatever it is, whatever enterprise we're,
00:21:40.540
we're talking about, self-sabotage, procrastination, perfectionism, all of those things that we know
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about, laziness, greed, um, over-competitiveness, um, that's resistance. And, um, it seems to be,
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it's must be born in everybody because I get hundreds and hundreds of letters, as you can imagine.
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Sure. And, uh, so again, the, sort of the, the, the, the manly virtues, sort of in my mind,
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although it could also be womanly, you know, you're looking from the point of view as a mother,
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who's braver than a mother raising a child, um, are the virtues, the internal virtues that allow you to
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face resistance and, and to overcome it and to do your work instead of letting resistance defeat you.
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And, you know, you blow your whole day, blow your year, blow, you know, blow your lifetime.
00:22:34.220
So what I find fascinating too, about what you write about in turning pro and do the work, like,
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yeah, well do the work, like the, your response basically to resistance is just get busy, like
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start doing something. Right. And then the magic happens. I think a lot of people,
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I know I've had this experience too, personally, is like, I expect the magic to happen. Right. I'll get,
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you know, the angels will come and, you know, the muses will come to me and then I'll just start
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writing. But you say it's the other way around. You have to start, you have to work for that. Then
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the muses or that inspiration comes. Which is exactly true. It's very workmanlike principle.
00:23:08.640
There's a, that quote from Somerset Maugham where somebody asked him, uh, do you write according to
00:23:15.420
a schedule or only when inspiration strikes you? And he says, I write only when inspiration strikes me.
00:23:21.300
He says, fortunately it strikes me every morning at nine o'clock sharp. So in other words, that's the
00:23:27.220
concept of do the work. Um, just, you know, it's like the Nike slogan, just do it, sit down. That's
00:23:34.520
to me, there's no mystery to it. You know, it's just a matter of, um, I have another saying that I
00:23:40.380
say, which is put your ass where your heart wants to be. And what I mean by that is if you want to paint,
00:23:47.060
get your body in front of an easel, you know, if you want to be a filmmaker, get out and shoot film,
00:23:54.360
you know, just act first and then inspiration will come in the course of it.
00:24:01.660
Are there, um, other things that get in the way of returning pro or becoming an amateur? Um,
00:24:07.720
so for example, you mentioned, I think in the authentic swing about, in the Bhagavad Gita,
00:24:12.400
um, it was Krishna said this, that, you know, you're entitled to your labor, but not the fruits
00:24:20.520
of your labor or something like that. It's like focusing on the fruit, like on the reward. Is
00:24:24.640
that just a form of resistance or is that something else that gets in the way of turning pro?
00:24:29.540
It is a form of resistance. And I got to say, Brett, it's a pleasure to be interviewed by
00:24:33.700
you who actually have thought about these things that, you know, you actually have done your,
00:24:38.780
you've done your work. I really appreciate it. Well, thank you. And I think it'll be very
00:24:43.240
helpful to people who hear this interview that they'll actually, you know, you can imagine the
00:24:48.060
incredible bullshit questions I get from a lot of people. But anyway, back to, what was the question
00:24:54.360
again? So, I mean, like, so like is focusing on the, yeah, focusing on, I think he said something
00:24:59.360
about, you know, you're entitled to your labor, but not the fruits of your labor. Right.
00:25:02.560
So that is a real Eastern principle. It's a Hindu principle that, uh, the concept of like we here
00:25:10.780
in the States, if we're going to start some kind of project, we already ask, ask ourselves, right?
00:25:15.260
Well, what's the payoff? Yeah. Where's the money? Where are the women? Oh, what do I get out of this
00:25:19.900
stuff? Right. Whereas it's a much more Eastern concept to say that the work is its own reward.
00:25:27.160
And you're not looking for the big payoff pie in the sky, brass ring at the end, but you're just
00:25:34.140
trying to, you have the right to, to do your labor, but not to the fruits of your labor. And if you look
00:25:39.240
at people that, that crash and burn after success, it's, you can watch it again and again, they suddenly
00:25:49.000
get the fruits of their labor and they just dive in and forget everything else. And then there's the
00:25:55.520
fastest way to go straight down the tubes. So just, I guess the goal is to focus on the process,
00:26:01.580
not the end result, not the product. Yeah. Process. That's not right. Yeah. Process. Which is really
00:26:07.320
true. I mean, it sounds like a bunch of high flown stuff, but if, if you're, you know, when you're a
00:26:12.480
kid and you go out and you're playing basketball on the court in your yard, you just love the game,
00:26:17.560
right? Yeah. That's all. That's the pure, the pure sense of it, the pure reality of it.
00:26:25.020
Here's, here's a question. So, I mean, I personally resonate with this whole idea of
00:26:28.320
fighting resistance and being a warrior in the face of that dark cloud that says you can't do it, but
00:26:33.680
I mean, do you always have to be fighting it or is there times when you can let go and just like
00:26:38.880
relax a bit or do you always have to fight the resistance? Is that something you always have to
00:26:42.660
do or do you need to know when to lay off a bit? I mean, I know it's kind of a vague question,
00:26:47.980
but I was wondering about that. No, I, I know what you mean. Yeah, actually. Um,
00:26:54.120
I mean, I do certainly think that, uh, another thing I always say is that habit is a mighty ally.
00:27:01.100
Yeah. And once you're in the groove of doing anything, going to the gym, swimming, running,
00:27:07.020
you know, but, uh, I, I think you were asking a different question. Okay. And, um, I'm actually
00:27:14.020
sort of right now in that kind of state where I, I just have finished a three year project and I'm not,
00:27:21.020
I'm kind of starting another one, but I'm, I'm, I'm not really into it yet. And it's a very dangerous
00:27:28.280
place to be for, for any artist. Um, have you ever heard of, uh, Billy Bishop, the world war one,
00:27:37.180
he was a world war one fighter pilot and he had some, some rules that he put out. And one of the
00:27:42.120
rules that they still talk about among, in any air force today is when is the most dangerous time
00:27:48.380
for a fighter pilot? And it is, the answer is it's immediately after making a kill
00:27:53.320
because you're suddenly right. You're all puffed up with yourself. You're so, and you lose,
00:27:59.780
you take your eye off the ball and somebody is on your tail and they shoot you down. So
00:28:04.900
I think when you finish one project, resistance is, is still there. It's hovering over you and,
00:28:14.180
and you have to kind of, for me at least get into another one right away and not get into that
00:28:21.360
trough that, that dip that Seth Godin talks about. Yeah. Otherwise it gets harder and harder. It's just
00:28:27.020
like a fitness regime, right? If you finish running a marathon and you crap out for the next two months,
00:28:34.240
when you try to start again, boy, it is really hard. You know, it doesn't mean you can't rest for a
00:28:39.240
little while after a marathon, but you got to get back on the horse pretty soon. Sure. I think that
00:28:44.320
that principle by Billy Bishop, I think other generals from history understood that as well.
00:28:48.600
I remember Alexander the Great and even Napoleon mentioned how like after a victory, they'd let
00:28:53.680
their soldiers maybe celebrate a little bit, right? Get their, get their, um, their treasure and
00:29:00.380
women. Um, but then right away they got them on another project, whether it was like digging a,
00:29:05.000
uh, uh, canal or whatever, because once, yeah, they knew once they got in that sort of lull,
00:29:11.700
it was hard to get out of it again. Yeah. All right. Um, so here's a question I had from a reader.
00:29:18.300
He wanted me to ask you is he really resonates with, um, your nonfiction about, you know, fighting
00:29:24.760
resistance. And, and it seems like a lot of it's geared towards writers and creative types because
00:29:29.220
you're a writer, but do you think it's just as applicable to say you're, you work in a corporate gig or
00:29:34.060
you're an electrician or a student? Do you think those, uh, those principles are just as applicable?
00:29:40.340
Well, that's another great question. I think that, uh, there's two different kinds of jobs. In my
00:29:46.280
opinion, there's a job that you do for money that your heart isn't really in, you know? Um,
00:29:53.900
and there, I don't think resistance enters at all. You're just slogging the work, doing your thing,
00:29:59.180
but, but when it's a job that you love, and a lot of times it's, it, that's your side job,
00:30:05.060
you know, somebody will work as an electrician, but they'll build motorcycles in the, you know,
00:30:09.500
in the garage on the weekend. And that's their kind of love. That's their passion. And that's
00:30:15.440
where resistance will come. In my opinion, my experience, resistance shows up when you're trying
00:30:22.280
to move from a lower level to a higher level. When you're trying to do something that you really
00:30:28.040
love that really is coming from the best part of yourself. Um, otherwise, if you're just going to
00:30:35.380
work, you're riding a subway into some cubicle, it doesn't even enter the picture. Well, very
00:30:41.200
interesting. Well, Stephen Pressfield, thank you so much for your time. This has been a, just a
00:30:44.140
fascinating conversation. Uh, I've really enjoyed your insights. I've gotten some insights that I've
00:30:49.040
had questions about that whole Lysander speech I've been thinking about a lot lately. So it was great
00:30:53.560
hearing, uh, hearing your input on that. So thank you so much again for your time.
00:30:57.000
Hey, Brad, thanks to you. Thanks for the great questions. And thanks for what you've done with
00:31:00.640
the art of manliness. You know, my hat's off to you. I salute you. There's a, that's a great work
00:31:05.080
of art that you started from nothing. And then you produced out of your own heart and your own
00:31:09.680
passion, you know, that is helping a lot of people. Well, thank you very much. That means a lot coming
00:31:14.200
from you. All right. Till next time. Till next time. Do the work, right? Okay.
00:31:21.080
Our guest day was Stephen Pressfield. Stephen is the author of several books ranging from fiction to
00:31:25.380
nonfiction. His latest nonfiction book is the authentic swing. It's about his experience,
00:31:30.360
writing the legend of Bagger Vance and lessons you can take from that. Uh, also lessons from the
00:31:35.260
game of golf, a really great book. And you find that on amazon.com. His latest fiction book is the
00:31:40.180
profession. Uh, if you read gates of fire, tides of war, you enjoyed those books. You'll love the
00:31:45.500
profession. It's all about that warrior ethos, but set in the near future. And you also check out
00:31:50.720
stephenpressfield.com. Stephen and his crew are constantly putting out top quality content there.
00:31:56.980
Uh, if you are an aspiring writer, especially you'll find the information there, uh, extremely
00:32:02.500
useful. And even if you're just a, uh, uh, entrepreneur or an aspiring entrepreneur, you'll
00:32:08.560
find the content there, uh, motivating and useful as well. So make sure to check out stephenpressfield.com.
00:32:14.720
Well, that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast. For more manly tips and advice,
00:32:22.640
make sure to check out the art of manliness website at art of manliness.com. And until next time,