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Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic. Each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoic, something that can help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, wisdom and temperance.

And here on the weekend we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview Stoic philosophers, we reflect, we prepare, we think deeply about the challenging issues of our time.

And we work through this philosophy in a way that's more possible here when we're not rushing to work or to get the kids to school when we have the time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with our journals and to prepare for what the future will bring.

I want to talk to you. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic podcast. I'm so excited about today's guest because as I tell him in the interview, I'm not sure I would be doing this show without him.

I guess today is not so much an intellectual influence on the show, although he's a brilliant man and I've been aware of his work for a long time, his influence is much more practical because my guest today, Toby Lutka is the founder of Shopify.

Shopify is, it's sort of the back end of almost all e-commerce on the internet these days. And it is like so many great products or inventions, something that allows people to unleash their creativity and productivity.

It powers the back end of the Daily Stoic store, for example, and countless other retailers and crafts people and artists and authors who, again, you probably weren't even aware you were checking out through Shopify, but you were.

Toby, as it happens, is a lifelong student of the Stoics super familiar with them and we go way in depth together about the Stoics, about how to remain Stoic inside success, how to operate by a moral code, if you will,

and deal with the obligation in his case of wealth and influence and how to live a philosophical life. And so I'm really happy with this interview.

We also talk about something, we talk about commerce. I don't think it's a coincidence that that Xeno found the Stoa in the Athenian Agora.

The Stoics were business people. Xeno himself was a business person. Seneca was an artist. The Stoics were not sort of removed from the realities of economics. They were familiar with them. They were aware of them.

And they believed, well, whatever you do, you should do right. You should do ethically. You should also do the best of your abilities. And that's why I know this intro is probably sounding a little bit like an ad, but Shopify really has helped me do that. And it's been a great platform for us here at Daily Stoic.

I'm just fascinated with anyone who builds something that is then used by millions and millions, not just of people, but millions and millions of businesses has enormous reach.

And again, it's powering the back end of the internet in a lot of ways. And that's another thing that Toby and I talk about. We talk about what it means to build something, to make something.

And to make something that ideally makes the world a better place, that's what we're trying to do as Stoics, that's what we're trying to do as human beings. So I think you're really going to like this interview. It's one of my favorites.

You can check out Shopify if you like. If you're thinking about opening a business, retail or online Shopify might be for you. You can also follow Toby at at T O B I on Twitter.

And I think I've got some great stuff there and enjoy this interview. And I hope you go out and build something.

I suggested we do the podcast just because sometimes when you when you meet someone you hop on the phone, you get like 10 minutes.

But a podcast seems to be a level of of depth that we don't get in most ordinary conversations these days.

And I love the podcast format. It's funny because I grew up in Germany, like little town. And I was like, I mean, I'm an engineer, I was really on the computers, but didn't know on what people were to compute us.

So I ended up like building like an entire skill set for almost like figuring out how I can be a fly on a wall in conversations that like experts had lots each other about topics I can't, you know what I mean?

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