Nova: What if the most important job in the world isn't CEO, or president, or founder... but ancestor? Not in the biological sense, but in the legacy we build. Are we leaving behind a world that is better, stronger, and wiser for those who follow in our footsteps? This is the profound question at the heart of Ryan Holiday's book, "The Daily Dad."

Yue: That’s a powerful framing. It shifts the focus from immediate achievement to long-term impact.

Nova: Exactly. And today, with Yue, founder of Codemao, we're going to explore this not just through the lens of parenting, but as a blueprint for leadership in the 21st century. Yue, you've dedicated your life's purpose to bringing well-being and hope to the world, to what you call "rebuilding spiritual civilization." This book feels like it speaks your language.

Yue: It does. The principles are timeless. Whether you're raising a child or building a team, the fundamental questions of character and legacy are the same.

Nova: I'm so glad you're here to explore this with us. Today we'll dive deep into this from two powerful perspectives. First, we'll explore the idea of leadership as a conscious, daily commitment. Then, we'll discuss the most effective—and only—method for this leadership: teaching by example.

Nova: So let's jump right in. Yue, the book kicks off with this incredibly sharp distinction. Holiday writes, "Procreating is biological. Parenting is psychological. It’s a decision. A conscious choice. A commitment." How does that land with you as a founder, someone who has to consciously choose his company's direction and culture every single day?

Yue: It lands perfectly. It’s the difference between a title and a practice. Anyone can be given the title of 'manager' or 'founder.' But to actually is a continuous act of will. It’s a psychological commitment to the growth and well-being of your people, just as a parent commits to the betterment of their child. It’s not automatic; it’s intentional.

Nova: That intentionality is everything. The book shares a really moving story about Winston Churchill that I think captures this shift. It's late at night, during a school holiday, and he's having this long, meandering conversation with his son, Randolph. And in the middle of it, Churchill stops and reflects on his own father.

Yue: What does he realize?

Nova: He realizes that in his entire life, he never had a single conversation like this with his own father. His father was a product of that Victorian era—distant, preoccupied, focused on providing, but not on connecting. The book says Churchill noted this with a "sense of forlorn amusement." In that moment, he was consciously choosing to be a different kind of father, a different kind of presence, than the one he had known. He was choosing connection.

Yue: That’s the exact shift from a transactional to a transformational relationship. Churchill's father saw his role as providing for survival—a transaction. Churchill, in that moment, realized his role was to provide connection—a transformation. It’s the same in an organization. You can just provide a salary and benefits; that's transactional leadership. It gets the job done, but it doesn't inspire.

Nova: So what's the alternative? The transformational approach?

Yue: Yes. The transformational leader chooses to provide a mission, a sense of belonging, a path for personal growth. That’s the conscious, psychological commitment the book is talking about. You're not just employing someone; you are taking on a responsibility for their potential. It’s a much higher calling, and it requires you to be present and engaged in a way that simply signing paychecks does not. That Churchill story is a perfect metaphor for a leader waking up to this deeper responsibility.

Nova: It’s the difference between building a machine and cultivating a garden.

Yue: Precisely. A machine is transactional. A garden is a living system that requires constant, conscious care. That is leadership. That is parenting.

Nova: And that commitment, that choice to be a transformational leader, leads us right to the book's next big idea. If you're not leading through transactions or commands, how you lead? The book's answer is so direct, almost brutally so. It quotes Albert Schweitzer: "Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing."

Yue: It's an unforgiving principle, but it's true. Your team, or your children, will eventually ignore what you say if it contradicts what you do. Your actions are the real curriculum. They are the source code of your culture.

Nova: The book is filled with examples of this, but two really stood out to me as a powerful contrast. The first is about Margaret Thatcher. In 1952, her father, a local politician, lost his office when a rival party took over. This was a public, humiliating defeat. He was hurt and upset.

Yue: How did he handle it? That's the critical moment.

Nova: Instead of lashing out or complaining, he made a public statement of incredible restraint. He said, "I was content to be in and I am content to be out." Thatcher said that watching her father lose with such grace and dignity taught her more about adversity and self-control than any lecture ever could. He modeled it. He lived it. And that lesson served her for the rest of her life.

Yue: That is a perfect example of emotional resilience as a core 'civilizational' value. Her father didn't just teach her about politics; he taught her how to integrate a setback without losing her internal state. That is the inner reconstruction my work is all about. He demonstrated a 'bug-free' response to failure.

Nova: And for the 'buggy' version, we can look at a more modern story the book touches on—the college admissions scandal with actor William H. Macy and his wife, Felicity Huffman. For years, Macy had given interviews about the importance of honesty. There's even a quote where he says, "The only thing worse than a liar is a liar that’s also a hypocrite."

Yue: Oh, the irony is painful.

Nova: It's devastating. Because then they were caught having fabricated their daughter's SAT scores. Their daughter, who knew nothing about it, had to watch her parents, who preached honesty, be exposed as hypocrites on a global stage. The lesson she learned wasn't the one they spoke; it was the one they acted out. The lesson was that they didn't trust her enough to succeed on her own.

Yue: This is the essence of 'civilization as the new code.' It's not a set of rules you post on a wall; it's an operating system that runs on integrity. The scandal you described shows a critical system vulnerability: hypocrisy. When leaders say one thing and do another, they introduce a virus of cynicism into the culture that is incredibly difficult to remove. It erodes the very trust that spiritual civilization is built on.

Nova: The book quotes Bruce Springsteen, who said, "We are ghosts or we are ancestors in our children’s lives." We either haunt them with our mistakes or we free them by being a good example.

Yue: That's it. In technology, we talk about legacy code versus a scalable architecture. It's the same principle. Are you, as a leader, leaving behind something that empowers the future? Or are you leaving behind a tangled mess of contradictions and 'technical debt' that haunts the next generation of leaders? Being an ancestor means writing clean code with your life. Being a ghost is leaving behind a legacy of hypocrisy and unresolved issues.

Nova: So, as we bring this all together, it feels like we've landed on two incredibly powerful, interconnected ideas from "The Daily Dad." First, that true leadership is a conscious choice, a daily psychological commitment to serve others.

Yue: And second, that this commitment is fulfilled not by what we say, but by what we do. Our example is the only curriculum that matters, especially when we face adversity.

Nova: Yue, you draw so much inspiration from timeless leaders and prophets—Washington, Socrates, the Buddha. This book is steeped in that same tradition of learning from the greats. As we close, what is the one 'ancestral' quality you believe is most critical for a leader to model today to help build that better, more civilized future you're so passionate about?

Yue: I believe it's the quiet virtue of self-mastery. In a world of constant noise, outrage, and reaction, the ability to master one's own emotions is the bedrock of leadership. To respond with dignity in failure, like Thatcher's father. To choose connection over distance, like Churchill did in that moment with his son. This isn't about grand, heroic gestures. It's about the daily, often unseen, practice of being the person you want your team, your children, and your world to become.

Nova: So it’s the internal work that makes the external example possible.

Yue: Exactly. That is the code for inner reconstruction. And when we live by that code, we become the ancestors the future needs.

Nova: A powerful and perfect place to end. Yue, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and connecting these dots for us today.

Yue: It was my pleasure. A truly important conversation.