Ryan Holiday is a genious in his own right. He somehow snuck into the personal circle of Robert Greene, Max Tucker, Tim Feriss. According to Neil Strauss (in an email on his personal newsletter), he was "in" with the former 3 just out of college, helping with research and marketing for Greene and Tucker, and being a guest speaker/organizer for a series of talks organized by Ferriss. I've found half a dozen guest posts by him on Ferriss's blog, including some very recent ones.

I guess if there's a thread connecting "hacker-ethos" self improvement authors, it's Ryan Holiday. I have quite some respect for him.