What does Iron Maiden have to do with Stoic philosophy?

Nothing really, but this is my newsletter and it’s what I want to talk about.

I’ve been an Iron Maiden fan since I was a kid (more about how I found them below). I’ve seen them live in Sacramento, Los Angeles, Austin and San Antonio (2x). If you’ve ever seen me on a podcast or in a ​Daily Stoic video​, if you’ve come to ​one of my talks​ or bumped into me in person…there’s a very good chance you saw me in an ​Iron Maiden t-shirt​. I even wrote about them in my book ​Perennial Seller​.

But mostly, what inspired this piece is that I am taking my 8-year-old to see them later this month…exactly twenty years after I went to my first Iron Maiden concert.

So what have I learned in two decades of an unhealthy fandom of a British heavy metal band?

A lot.

Let me tell you.

Know what business you’re in. There is a story about the manager of Iron Maiden, Rod Smallwood, who has worked with the band since 1979. He is at a dinner honoring the group. A young agent comes up to him and says how much he admires his skillful work in the industry. The manager looks at him and says, “HA! You think I am in the music business? No. I’m in the Iron fucking Maiden business.” The publishing industry? The retail business? These are not the businesses I am in–just like you’re not in the coffee industry or B2B. No, you’re in the business of you. You’re in the business of serving your customers in your city with your unique offering. The trends of the bull or bear market? It doesn’t matter, just as the trendiness (or lack of trendiness) of heavy metal hasn’t mattered to Iron Maiden. What matters is their relationship with their fans. That’s who they are in service of. That’s the job. And so it goes for all of us, whatever we do.

Develop range. Bruce Dickinson, the lead singer of Iron Maiden, has incredible range. I don’t mean his voice (though it’s very impressive). I mean that he has done more than just sing in a band that’s sold millions of records. He’s done more than have a decent solo career. He wrote a couple of popular children’s novels. He became an Olympic-level fencer (seriously, nearly making the British Olympic team). Oh, and then he learned how to fly planes…like really big ones. Here’s a picture of the Iron Maiden plane…which he flies after the band performs, taking the group to their next gig.

That is preposterous! The only thing more ridiculous is that for many years he also worked for Astraeus Airlines and ​once airlifted British tourists stranded in Egypt​. It’s one thing to master one skill, but to master a couple different domains? That’s hard. But it pays off. Because we learn skills and are introduced to new ideas that we can bring back to our main thing (a bunch of the best Iron Maiden songs are about flying…and swords). A book recommendation in this regard is David Epstein’s book, ​Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World​.

Create spectacles. The “Ed Force One,” as they call the Iron Maiden plane, is not just a mode of transportation—it’s a flying billboard, a conversation starter, a part of the Maiden mythology. Wherever it lands, it captures attention, sparks curiosity, and draws people into their world. Are there cheaper, more efficient ways to travel on tour? Probably. But that’s not the point.

I always think about spectacles (albeit on a much smaller scale). When we were setting up ​The Painted Porch​, that blend of function and spectacle inspired one of the best decisions we made—making ​our book tower​. It’s 20 feet tall and made of some 2,000 books, 4,000 nails, and 40 gallons of glue. It was not cheap to do. It was not easy. It took forever. We had to solve all sorts of logistical problems to make it work. But it’s also probably one of the single best marketing and business decisions we made in the whole store. Because it’s the number one thing people come into the store to take pictures of.

Focus on what’s in your control. Ok, maybe there is one Stoic lesson. As you know, the core of Stoic philosophy is focusing on what’s in your control. It’s about ignoring what other people do and say and putting that energy into what you do and say. Bruce Dickinson explained Iron Maiden’s philosophy: “We have our field and we’ve got to plough it and that’s it. What’s going on in the next field is of no interest to us; we can only plough one field at a time.” Do you…you’re the only one who can. It hasn’t always been easy, but I’ve tried to remind myself that it doesn’t matter how many books other people sell. It doesn’t matter what anyone else is doing. I’m writing about an obscure school of ancient philosophy. It has its own ceiling and its own floor. I’m comfortable with that.

Success and fame are byproducts. It’s fair to say that Iron Maiden is a cult act rather than a mainstream act. And yet, it’s a very big cult. They’ve sold millions of records. ​Here’s a video of them performing in front of 250,000 people​. The point is: The band is famous. But what is fame? Marcus Aurelius would say that it’s nothing–the clapping of hands and the clacking of tongues. Actually, Bruce Dickinson has a better quote, I think, because unlike an emperor, their fame was slightly more meritocratic. “Fame is the excrement of creativity,” Dickinson once said, “it’s the shit that comes out the back end, it’s a by-product of it.” So yeah, chasing fame is not only not really worth it, but you don’t get it by chasing it either. An audience, a reputation, fame, these are ​lagging indicators​ of years of making stuff that people like and get to know you through. It’s the byproduct of doing the work.

Build a resilient career. As a British heavy metal act, there’s naturally a bunch of Churchill cameos in their work. It’s fitting because Maiden’s career bears some resemblance to Churchill’s approach to building a resilient career. In ​Perennial Seller​, I tell the story of how Churchill maintained influence even when exiled from politics in 1931. Unlike an ordinary politician, who would have been powerless when voted out of office, Churchill had something more valuable than office—a platform. Between 1931 and 1939, during his so-called political wilderness, he published 11 books, 400+ articles, and delivered more than 350 speeches. The result of this was an enormous worldwide platform that allowed him not only to survive financially but wield influence that kept him relevant and guided policy and opinion across the globe. This is not unlike Iron Maiden, whose platform transcends the typical constraints of the music industry. Instead of relying on album sales or radio play, they created a multi-faceted empire: elaborate stage shows, their iconic mascot Eddie, comic books, video games, and even their own beer. It’s what’s solidified them as a perennial force in the music industry, enabling them to endure fads and technological shifts. Of course, it’s meant financial success, but what’s even more impressive is that their platform frees them to communicate to their fans without interference from intermediaries and allows them to create work on their own terms.

Respect the boundaries. What’s interesting is that despite all Bruce’s range and all the decades Iron Maiden has made music, there’s not a huge difference between their first album and their most recent, Senjutsu. Basically–and this includes the different lead singers–Iron Maiden has been following the same formula on all their albums for the last 49 years. I don’t think that’s an insulting thing to say–it’s no small feat. It’s also something they’ve done on purpose. As Bruce has explained,

I know what my audience expects from me. I don’t find that constraining, it’s actually liberating. One of the Stoics, Cleanthes, would talk about how the ‘fetters’ of poetry actually unlock creativity–I think that’s true. You establish a contract with your audience, an expectation of the medium, and you have to deliver on that. The freedom is in the how.

What matters is that it’s interesting to you. On some level, Iron Maiden’s songs are absurd. Music is supposed to be about stuff that people relate to–falling in love, growing up, partying, having fun. Iron Maiden writes 10-minute songs about literature and history. They have songs inspired by Coleridge poems, science fiction novels, historical figures like Genghis Khan and Alexander The Great. They’ve got a song about Passchendaele (one of the most horrific battles of the First World War) songs about D-Day and the Crimean War. Steve Harris, who writes most of the band’s songs, clearly loves to read. Which is the point–he finds these things very interesting. And as a result, they become very interesting to the audience. Again, on the surface, an obscure school of ancient philosophy should be pretty boring. My publisher and most of my friends suspected it would be…but my passion for it was contagious.

Build on greatness. They don’t just write songs about ancient history. They’ve got songs based on lines from Shakespeare, the ​epic novels of Frank Herbert​ and the myth of Icarus. It’s very hard to do better than Tennyson or Coleridge (a poem of whose Iron Maiden has a 14-minute song about), so don’t fight it. Or what about Aces High, for which the music video opens with Churchill’s greatest speech? Iron Maiden is very good at incorporating great works of art into their art. Never underestimate the power of repackaging something timeless and old. In my teens, I discovered so much stuff through Iron Maiden. None of my teachers read us ​The Charge of the Light Brigade​–I heard it from Iron Maiden (my son can recite a big chunk of the poem now). I read ​Brave New World​ because they have an album based on the book. I’ve taken a lot of joy out of paying that process forward in my own books, finding stuff that I love, that I think is great and introducing people to it.

Make it a universe of true fans. There is a theory put forward by Kevin Kelly, the founder of Wired magazine. He calls it 1,000 True Fans: “A creator, such as an artist, musician, photographer, craftsperson, performer, animator, designer, videomaker, or author—in other words, anyone producing works of art—needs to acquire only 1,000 True Fans to make a living.” Iron Maiden is this idea on a massive scale. Somebody once joked that Iron Maiden has sold more t-shirts than albums. If that’s true, it’s no small feat (the band has sold over 130 million albums) and not exactly a bad thing (you make more money on merch than music). But I think that’s why I’ve always liked the band. It’s not just music but a whole universe of art and imagery and themes. There’s even a phrase that the fans say to let each other know their identity: Up the Irons! This is something I thought a lot about with ​Daily Stoic​. I don’t just ​write books​, but I have ​designed​ and ​made things​ that continue that experience in many ​different mediums​. It can’t be, as Lady Gaga warned, “Thanks for buying my record, fuck you.” It should be, “Oh, you liked what I did? Here’s a bunch of other cool stuff that I designed for people just like you.” Don’t stop at the surface with what you’re building–make it a world. Better yet, make it a universe of hard-core, true fans.

Backstage of the Tamron Hall Show

Find ways to spread. When I was on ​Jocko’s podcast last year​, he asked me how I became an Iron Maiden fan. ​As I explained​, I was trying to illegally download a Metallica album and ended up with an Iron Maiden album. But then again, how else was I going to discover them? It had been years since they were on regular rotation on MTV and unlike Metallica, rarely got radio play. Solving the problem of discovery is the thing all arts and companies have to figure out. Sometimes traditional avenues are open, but often they are not–or they are very clogged. When Iron Maiden sells out a stadium in Brazil or Colombia or India, how do you think most of those fans heard about them? In a lot of cases, it was via bootlegs. It was YouTube. The same is true for writers. Obviously, piracy is not ideal. It would be better if everything was legitimate and affordable. But that’s not the case. If you want to maintain relevance and sustain an audience, you have to embrace these other channels. You can’t sweat every YouTube upload or every time someone rips you off. In fact, you can appreciate that what it’s doing is adding to the universe you’ve created. There’s a reason I give away the vast majority of stuff that I make–I want to find its way to people, I want the barriers of entry, of discovery, to be as low as possible. You never know what kind of journey you might kick off for someone who comes across your stuff.

Play the long game. Iron Maiden has been at it for nearly 50 years and counting! They’re playing the long game, defying every stereotype in the music business. 17 studio albums, 14 live albums, 2,000 concerts in 59 countries, over 130 million albums sold. They performed for 250,000 people as the headliners of the Rock in Rio festival—26 years after the band formed. This empire wasn’t built on one hit album or a viral single. It’s the result of applying a perennial seller mindset to everything they do. It’s easy to chase quick wins, but Maiden reminds us that real magic happens when you zoom out. When I first started listening to Iron Maiden, I remember reading that they had sold something like 50 million albums. That was a lot then, but what’s amazing is that twenty years later, that number has almost tripled. Do you know how insane it is to sell that many records these days? But that’s the thing–time and momentum are incredibly powerful forces. In the beginning, small efforts might seem insignificant. But they accumulate and compound over time. Whether it’s a decades-spanning discography, a business, a career or an anthill, impressive outcomes start with humble beginnings.

The more the merrier. In 1990, Adrian Smith, one of the band’s best guitarists, left the band. He was ably replaced by Janick Gers for 9 years, until Adrian asked to rejoin the band. There is something special about original lineups so you might expect that Gers left the band, but nope. The band just switched to having three guitarists! And why not? It just means more guitar solos for everyone! Is there an applicable lesson here? I dunno, I’ve just always liked it.

My Iron Maiden Christmas sweater

Just keep going. How has Iron Maiden lasted through the years? It wasn’t just by making great work—it was by making a lot of it over and over again. Some of Iron Maiden’s greatest songs are on “Brave New World” (released 25 years after the band was formed) or “Dance of Death” (released 28 years in). It’s easy to be intimidated by success, or to be made complacent by it or to give in to the fan’s reverence for the past. But it’s better for you and your art to put those feelings aside, to keep trucking along, to keep making stuff. When I first heard Iron Maiden in 2001, they had already been going for 26 years at that point. And they’re still going! Every time I see tour dates, I get nervous and tell myself, I should probably catch them one more time. That’s what I did on this tour and then you know what I saw? They announced another tour for 2025. But that’s the thing when you make great, perennial work–it creates momentum for you to keep going. Not only that, it means it will live on well after you stop.

I’m nearly two decades into my career. Sometimes I get tired, but that’s when I remind myself that I have a lot further to go, that I’ve got a lot more in me. Just keep going. Maiden taught me that.

Iron Maiden shoes backstage of The Daily Show