You Are What You Won’t Do For Money

It was a sales pitch, so I take it with a grain of salt, but according to an email I got a few weeks ago, I have a seven-figure opportunity sitting in front of me.

And I’m apparently too stupid or closed-minded to see it.

All I would have to do is partner with a supplement maker and produce a line of supplements connected to the Daily Stoic brand — marketing their ability to help with “calm, clarity, and resilience” — and I could very easily make several million dollars. They’d handle everything: procurement, production, design, fulfillment. I’d just have to lend my brand and my platform to do it.

The only problem? I don’t want to.

I’m not exactly opposed to supplements or vitamins. I actually take a few each morning. I even advertise some on the Daily Dad and Daily Stoic podcasts. Nor am I opposed to making money. I don’t think there is anything wrong with it, and neither did the Stoics (“No one has condemned wisdom to poverty,” Seneca writes in On The Happy Life. “The philosopher shall have considerable wealth, but it will not have been pried from any man’s hands, and it will not be stained with another man’s blood.”)

But I have always declined to do things like Daily Stoic T-shirts and hats and cheap merch: It doesn’t feel right. It doesn’t get me excited. It doesn’t seem like a…