Meta Description

Scott Smith explores memento mori and Stoic leadership, reminding us to give loved ones our attention today rather than assume another opportunity will come.

🎙️ Episode Summary

We tend to assume there will be another conversation, another visit, another chance to say what someone means to us. In this episode, Scott Smith explores memento mori and its place in Stoic leadership: remembering that our time together is finite can help us be more present today.

Drawing on Seneca’s encouragement to enjoy our friendships while we can, Scott reflects on how familiarity can lead us to take people for granted. Being physically nearby can feel like spending time together, even when our attention is elsewhere.

Having lost his parents and his first wife, Scott speaks personally about grief and the importance of making sure the people he loves know how deeply he loves them. He also reminds us that each person’s grieving process is their own.

For founders and executives whose responsibilities compete for attention, this is an invitation to make room for the people who matter.

Your assignment: give someone ten minutes of your attention today. Call a parent, talk with your spouse, spend time with a child, or reach out to a friend. An ordinary conversation counts.

🧠 What You’ll Learn Today

• How memento mori can encourage affection and presence in everyday life.
• Why assuming there will always be another opportunity can cost us meaningful time.
• How physical proximity differs from giving someone your attention.
• Why expressing love matters while people are here to receive it.
• How ten minutes of ordinary conversation can put this reflection into practice.

🔍 Tags

Stoicism, Stoic Leadership, Memento Mori, Seneca, Presence, Family Relationships, Friendship, Grief and Loss, Intentional Living, Executive Leadership

Support the show

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The Stoic Inner Strategy is a leadership podcast for founders, executives, and other leaders who carry significant responsibility, even when they have a capable team around them.

Hosted by Scott Smith, Principal Advisor and founder of Akhada Consulting, each episode explores the judgment, discipline, and leadership capacity required to make sound decisions under pressure, develop stronger people, and build organizations that do not depend on one person carrying everything.

Stoic wisdom provides the foundation, but the focus is practical: how to lead yourself, strengthen the people around you, and meet responsibility with clarity, courage, and character.

New episodes are released Monday through Friday, with occasional interviews and special episodes.

If this episode helped you see your leadership more clearly, subscribe to the show and share it with another leader who carries the weight.

Connect with Scott:

• Akhada Consulting: akhadaconsulting.com
• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/scott8smith
• Email: scott.smith@akhadaconsulting.com

Memento Mori. Time is limited. Lead accordingly.

Meta Description

Stoic leadership includes knowing when to stop. Scott Smith challenges hustle culture and explores temperance, recovery, and rest without needing to justify it.

🎙️ Episode Summary

Have you ever sat down to rest and immediately felt the need to justify it? In this episode, Scott Smith explores Stoic leadership through temperance and the belief that stopping means falling behind.

For founders and executives, intense work can become a habit that leaves little room for recovery. Scott acknowledges that demanding seasons happen and focused effort matters. He also challenges the assumption that success requires constant exertion.

Drawing on Seneca’s counsel about allowing the mind to relax, Scott considers reasonable limits on effort and the place of rest, recreation, friendship, and companionship in a human life.

Rest can support your ability to work over time. But every enjoyable moment does not need a measurable outcome or a business justification.

Your assignment: choose a reasonable stopping point in something you’re doing, then give yourself permission to rest and enjoy yourself without treating that enjoyment like another task.

🧠 What You’ll Learn Today

• How hustle culture can make stopping feel like failure.
• Why recovery belongs alongside periods of concentrated effort.
• How Stoic temperance applies to reasonable limits on exertion.
• Why recreation, friendship, and companionship deserve space in your life.
• How to choose a stopping point and rest without assigning it a useful result.

🔍 Tags

Stoicism, Stoic Leadership, Seneca, Temperance, Hustle Culture, Rest and Recovery, Founder Mindset, Leadership Discipline, Executive Leadership, Work-Life Balance

Support the show

—

The Stoic Inner Strategy is a leadership podcast for founders, executives, and other leaders who carry significant responsibility, even when they have a capable team around them.

Hosted by Scott Smith, Principal Advisor and founder of Akhada Consulting, each episode explores the judgment, discipline, and leadership capacity required to make sound decisions under pressure, develop stronger people, and build organizations that do not depend on one person carrying everything.

Stoic wisdom provides the foundation, but the focus is practical: how to lead yourself, strengthen the people around you, and meet responsibility with clarity, courage, and character.

New episodes are released Monday through Friday, with occasional interviews and special episodes.

If this episode helped you see your leadership more clearly, subscribe to the show and share it with another leader who carries the weight.

Connect with Scott:

• Akhada Consulting: akhadaconsulting.com
• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/scott8smith
• Email: scott.smith@akhadaconsulting.com

Memento Mori. Time is limited. Lead accordingly.

Meta Description

Scott Smith reflects on finishing his degree after decades of delay and how Stoic leadership helps us return to meaningful goals without tying them to our worth.

🎙️ Episode Summary

Something can matter to you for years while necessary responsibilities take priority. In this episode, Scott Smith explores a Stoic distinction that matters for founders and executives: pursuing a meaningful goal without making achievement the measure of your worth.

In April 2025, Scott finally completed his bachelor’s degree at BYU. He had started college decades earlier, but providing for his family repeatedly took precedence. Finishing remained important throughout those years.

Scott shares how his wife Robin encouraged him to give that commitment dedicated time and focus, how he reconsidered his expectations about learning everything in every class, and what it felt like to cross the graduation stage with family cheering.

Drawing on Epictetus’s teaching about external things and how we use them, Scott reflects on why a degree could be deeply worthwhile without defining who he was.

Your assignment: identify a commitment you have deferred, consider whether it still matters, and decide what you can do now to move it forward.

🧠 What You’ll Learn Today

• Why a meaningful goal can remain important while family responsibilities take priority.
• How dedicated time and focus helped Scott finish a decades-long commitment.
• How expecting to absorb everything can slow your progress.
• How Epictetus’s distinction between external things and their use applies to achievement.
• How to revisit a deferred commitment without making it a judgment on your worth.

🔍 Tags

Stoicism, Stoic Leadership, Epictetus, Personal Commitments, Lifelong Learning, Leadership Discipline, Executive Leadership, Meaningful Goals, Self-Worth, Decision Making

Support the show

—

The Stoic Inner Strategy is a leadership podcast for founders, executives, and other leaders who carry significant responsibility, even when they have a capable team around them.

Hosted by Scott Smith, Principal Advisor and founder of Akhada Consulting, each episode explores the judgment, discipline, and leadership capacity required to make sound decisions under pressure, develop stronger people, and build organizations that do not depend on one person carrying everything.

Stoic wisdom provides the foundation, but the focus is practical: how to lead yourself, strengthen the people around you, and meet responsibility with clarity, courage, and character.

New episodes are released Monday through Friday, with occasional interviews and special episodes.

If this episode helped you see your leadership more clearly, subscribe to the show and share it with another leader who carries the weight.

Connect with Scott:

• Akhada Consulting: akhadaconsulting.com
• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/scott8smith
• Email: scott.smith@akhadaconsulting.com

Memento Mori. Time is limited. Lead accordingly.