Stoic Optimism: Ryan Holiday at TEDxUChicago 2014

Post-Production: Hamid Bendaas | Fire Escape Films ()

Ryan Holiday is the Director of Marketing at American Apparel and the author of "The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Adversity to Advantage (May 2014), a manual for approaching the obstacles we face in life and flipping them into advantages.

He is also the author of the Wall Street Journal bestseller "Trust Me, I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator"—an expose of the problematic incentives of the contemporary online journalism system—and the book "Growth Hacker Marketing: A Primer on the Future of PR, Marketing, and Advertising." In addition, he is a leading media strategist whose campaigns have been studied by YouTube, Twitter, and Google, and covered in Fast Company, Ad Age, and Gawker; the Founder of Brass Check Marketing and a Partner at StoryArk Creative; as well as the Editor-at-Large of Betabeat, the New York Observer's online home for tech news.

Holiday has also served as an assistant for the likes of Tucker Max (UChicago AB '98), Robert Greene, and Dov Charney.

He has done all of this after dropping out of college at the age of 19.

Holiday writes at RyanHoliday.net, Thought Catalog, and Betabeat.

He is based out of Austin, TX.

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In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.* (*Subject to certain rules and regulations)