#794 - Scott Galloway - The 4 Secrets To Get Rich In A Broken Economy
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Hello everybody, welcome back to the show. My guest today is Scott Galloway. He's a professor of marketing at the New York University Stern School of Business, a public speaker, entrepreneur, and an author. The modern economy is a confusing mess. Inflation, interest rates, wage stagnation, property prices, it's all complex and may feel like you're swimming upstream. Thankfully, Scott has broken down his entire wealth strategy into an algorithm of four steps which anyone can follow.

Expect to learn why wealth is a whole person project, what all financially successful people have in common, how to forgive yourself when you fall short, why following your passion is often a bad idea, the importance of physical fitness for financial wealth, and much more. Scott is an interesting guy. He is...

obviously from the left, ardently supports the left, and yet is a ruthless capitalist that tries to make as much money as possible and is super male supportive. It's an interesting and non-typical blend and I appreciate his insights and I think that there is a lot of really good wisdom here about how to become rich because, well, he's certainly made it work for him.

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What is the problem with following your passion? Everyone's told that they should follow their passion. What's up with that? Well, sure, but just keep in mind that the person telling you to follow your passion is already rich usually, and they made their billions in iron ore smelting. And I think a lot of young people mistake their hobbies for passion. And my suggestion is that you try and find your talent. And that is something that you think you have some natural ability around and that with a requisite 10,000 hours of commitment, training, discipline, and

that you could become in the top 10% or even maybe the top 1%. And here's the key part, in an industry that has a 90 plus percent employment rate, because the top 10% of tax lawyers fly private and have a broader selection set of mates than they deserve, the top 10% of basketball players like me get cut from JV basketball like me in the 10th grade. So you want to go where...

A modest surfer can look amazing where the waves are great. And the waves are great in 98% of industries. 98% of industries have a 90 plus percent unemployment rate right now. But if you want to be in modeling, sports, open a nightclub, open...

a restaurant, be in acting, be in the arts. I don't want to crush anyone's dream, but you better be getting pretty bright green lights from a very young age that you're in the top 1% because there are 180,000 actors in the SAG-AFTRA union. It is the most talented actors in the world. And last year, 87% of them didn't qualify for health insurance because they made less than $23,000. And what I have found as I've gotten older is that

The ability to master something and become a ninja at it, and then the accoutrements of that mastery, relevance, camaraderie, prestige, economic security, whatever provides you with those things makes you passionate about whatever it is. And the example I use is I'm renovating a house and this Iraqi immigrant is the soapstone guy. Everyone renovating houses in Marlboro knows the soapstone guy.

And he knows all the quarries. He's very passionate about the different marbling and the different colors. And he talks to you. It's almost like poetry listening to him. And he installs a soapstone counter for 18,000 pounds, right? And we all have to use him because he's the soapstone guy. And I talked to him very openly. I told him I wrote a book on financial literacy and I asked him about his business. He makes 1.2 million pounds a year.

And that type of, and he's just really passionate about soapstone. And I have noticed, I'm sure he'd be interested in it, but I think this has given him such an extraordinary living that he's become really passionate about it. And what I would argue is that as you get older, you become really passionate about taking care of your kids. You become really passionate about doing wonderful things with your spouse, taking care of your parents.

and your priorities change. And I feel like, okay, if I could change spots with Federer or Nadal, I would. I think they have a more interesting life than me. But the number seven player on the men's tennis tour, I have a better life than him because I get to go to Wimbledon and buy my way in, and I don't throw up before matches or have to put up with the insecurity of like, okay, if I don't make it to number one, does that haunt me the rest of my life? Am I going to have enough money?

So, guarantee that you might be the seventh or eighth best tennis player or football player in the world by developing mastery in a business where there's not an overinvestment of human capital. And so, your 20s is for workshopping. I thought I was going to be an athlete. Got to UCLA and found out, no, these are real athletes, Scott. Being in the top 10% in high school is in the bottom 10% of every college D1 team in America.

And then I thought, well, I'll be a pediatrician. And chemistry disabused me of that notion. And then I thought I'll be an investment banker. And I just wasn't very good at it. And then I found something else. I found analytics and business intelligence. I didn't even know those things existed. And I became great at it. And now I'm passionate about it because it's afforded me with an amazing life. And what I would just say is find, use your 20s to try and lean into your talent.

And recognize that a lot of times these vanity industries just have an inverse correlation in terms of ROI. The sexier the industry, the lower the return on investment. And if you can get good at or great at anything and start making real money at it and just develop that pride of ninja mastery, trust me on this, you're going to become passionate about it. So find your talent. I like the idea of your passion coming out of competence. If you become good at something,

on the other side of that, you're going to be passionate about it because anything that you get positive reward from, like you say, the soapstone guy, is it that glamorous? Kind of, I guess, if you tell a cool story about it. Pretty fucking glamorous if you bottom line 1.2 million pounds a year, though. Well, and we're fascinated with this guy. He turns our kitchen into a work of art, or at least he's convinced us that this is now a work of art. And he gets...

He gets relevance. He gets credibility. He has a lot of people working for him that are grateful to him. I think he feels good about paying a lot of taxes. I think he feels really good about having influence and being able to send money home to his family in Iraq. And I just, all of these things will make you passionate. And as I've gotten older, yeah, I would love to play quarterback for the Jets right now. That'd be a lot of fun. But I'm not exaggerating. What's funner for me and even more rewarding is I get to take care of my dad.

And it's like no skin off my back. I can step in. My dad's at that age, Chris, where he's just requiring a decent amount of, not a lot, probably a lot less than most 94-year-olds, but he's 94. And my sister can step in because she has more time than me. And I can show up because I have money. And it just feels really good. It just feels really good. And if you find someone who really inspires you or an issue that really inspires you,

you can, you know, it makes me feel strong like bull to be able to give money away. I don't do it because I'm philanthropic or a good person. I do it because it makes me feel strong. And this is the power of mastery and kind of ninja skills in a capitalist economy. And the thing about America and the UK is that, especially America, America becomes more like itself every day. And that is, it's a loving, generous place for people with money. And it's a rapacious, violent place for people who don't have money. And I'm not, my book isn't about what should be. My book is about what is.

And I think this is especially important for men. And distinctive of what MSNBC or The Atlantic will tell you, I still advocate for men taking economic responsibility for their household. And let me be clear, sometimes that means being more supportive of your partner who's better at the whole money thing than you. So if it ends up your wife, as are a lot of women now who are attending college in greater numbers,

ends up she's better at that whole professional money thing than you, then your job as a man who took economic responsibility, or at least wants to participate in it, is to be supportive of her and get out of the way. My partner worked at Goldman Sachs when I started my company, and I did my best to be there to get the kids up and be home for bath time because I knew like, okay, she's a baller. And I want our household to be economically robust. And

But I think a good place to start for any man is to say, I'm going to be the provider or I'm going to take responsibility for the economics here. I think every man should start from that viewpoint. And anyone that doesn't tell you or anyone that claims that your ability to attract a high character, a really good person who's really attractive as a mate, a woman, and tells you that money is important is just full of shit.

Three quarters of women cite economic viability as a key criteria in a mate. Only a quarter of men, you know, you've heard the stats. Men, you know, I think I've learned a lot of this shit from you. But let's just have an honest conversation that if you ask men what's important to you,

All right, I want to have a family. I want to be relevant. I want to attract an interesting mate. I want to have camaraderie. I want to be a good citizen. Well, boss, it all bubbles up to the same thing. You need to make a good living. And so the question is, well, how do you reverse engineer from what is a good living? And I'll never be a good skier. I'll never be a good surfer. But what I find when I'm in Hawaii, I'm actually a pretty good surfer because the waves are perfect. Get to where the waves are perfect. Get to an industry where if being in the top 10%,

doesn't get you a SAG-AFTRA union card and basically turn you into an Uber driver, but gets you the ability to have a really nice car and take wonderful vacations with your family. So I think economic viability is just so incredibly important for everyone, but quite frankly, especially for men because men are disproportionately and sometimes unfairly evaluated on their economic vitality. Women are disproportionately and unfairly evaluated on their aesthetics.

And we should, I'd like to see the world change. I don't see it changing. I see the bullshit wallpaper that, oh, these things aren't as important. And I find that they have not decreased one bit. As a matter of fact, I think it's actually increased in importance because the reality is, you know, when I was a kid, my dad's boss had a slightly bigger house, but he lived in the same neighborhood. You know, he had a Cadillac, we had a Thunderbird, but it was still kind of the same car.

Now, if you have money in the U.S., different doctors, different schools, a set of vacations and hotels that are just totally out of reach for all but the top 1%. I'm working, you know, I can't get my passport for England and it ends up that I know the right senator. I mean, money just gets you in a capitalist society. I remember I did the proverbial backpack trip when I was younger and

And we were going to Hungary and this will date me, but I went into the American Express office and cashed in with my wallet belt, some traveler's checks. And they gave me this stack of Forens. I mean, just a huge stack. I felt like a drug dealer. And I'm like, oh, finally, I'm a baller and I'm going to go to Hungary and I'm going to have all this money. And I went and there was nothing to buy. There was literally nothing to buy. You could get really good coffee. And I thought, okay, there's nothing to spend. We're the exact opposite of that.

Every day, the most talented people in the world are sending you messages that are AI tested and psychologically tested to convince you that you really should add that chocolate flowers cake from Balthazar Boulangerie to your, you know, tuna cotto from Joe and the Juice. That, oh, wait, for just $120, you can upgrade from economy to economy comfort. And then for $280, why not to business? This is a fun weekend. This is your friend's wedding. You deserve it. This is an investment in yourself.

So you are fighting an uphill battle trying to save money so that you can deploy an army of capital that fights for you and your family and your sleep. It takes real discipline because there's so much amazing shit to buy in the United States. Now, the flip side of that is if you do have some discipline and you can aggregate capital and become an owner instead of an earner, which should be everyone's goal, um,

America just offers just an incredible quality of life. I mean, it both amazes me and depresses me. And the example I use is the following. I took me and my son and his sixth best friend. Occasionally, I just have to show up and be dad.

My partner just carries so much more of the load on the responsibilities, but occasionally I have to show up. So, you know, okay, Disneyland, seventh ring of hell. I'm going to take our kids and their friends to Disneyland for the full day. Have you heard about this VIP program?

tour you can get? I've done it at Universal Studios, but not at Disneyland. Okay, so you know what it is. But basically, it's about 800 bucks an hour. So six, seven hours, six grand, $6,000. But you do it. And granted, I'm going to raise like enormous assholes, right? I'm incredibly privileged. And you go to the Avatar ride, and you see a sign.

And the sign says three hour wait from this point. So they could pass out an iPad with the movie avatar and you could watch it before you get to the front of the line. And you see these middle-class families with three kids with dad holding the four-year-old who's been asleep for two hours and they still got an hour to go. And then we, the really privileged and lucky ones kind of just like lower our heads and walk by them. And then we're told when we get on the ride, here's the hand signal if you want to go a second time.

I mean, the experience I have at Disney is just so dramatically different than the experience I used to have when I was a kid. And by the way, I'm not sure it's a good thing, but we're doing that to every part of our economy. Every part of our economy says, if you have money, this is going to be a different experience, even though it's supposed to be the same experience. And there's some real externalities to that, but just the healthcare you can get if you have money. I'm struggling with my shoulders and-

I'm just so glad I finally have some money to kind of just attack it with physical therapists and acupuncture and stuff. I'm like, this stuff would have been covered by insurance or it just would have taken me so much time. But anyways, I'm discouraged when I see how important money has become in the US, the financialization of everything. But that's not what the book is about. The book is an acknowledgment

That if you really want to enjoy your life and offer everything that America has, you need a concerted, disciplined plan for financial security. Well, you can't change the rules of the game.

but you can learn how to actually play and win within them. So how do you think about deconstructing what wealth looks like? What should people do in order to achieve financial security? Well, the first I'll define what wealth is. I define rich as the following passive income that's greater than your burn. And I'll give you two examples. I have a close friend who runs the M&A group of a large bulge bracket investment bank. He makes 3 million in a bad year, 14 million in a great year. Because it's all current income,

And he lives in Connecticut. He pays about 52% tax rate. But that's still a lot of money. But between his ex-wife, his alimony, his child support, his home in the Hamptons, his master of the universe lifestyle that he thinks he needs and wants to signal to his friends, I know firsthand he doesn't save a lot of money. And it is an enormous source of stress for him and on his marriage.

And then he's what I call poor or the working poor. Despite how much money he's making, he's hugely stressed out. Money and the need for money is a huge source of stress for him. My father, between his Royal Navy pension and Social Security, and he owns about a dozen washing machines that he collects quarters from in trailer parks,

He makes about $52,000 a year without really working. He enjoys going and collecting quarters. My dad is Scottish. He's like tragically cheap. I'm pretty sure he goes home, lays the quarters out on his bed and rolls around in them. I think that's probably fun for him. But his passive income, and he spends $48,000. He's rich. His passive income is greater than his burn. That's the definition of rich.

And so that's a point. You want to get to a point where you have enough investments that are spinning off capital or growing such that your passive income is greater than your burn. And you can do the math, right? Well, okay, if I'm going to need

$120,000 a year and I think I'll get 8% or 6% on that, I need to save 2 million. All right, this is how many years I have to work. I'll assume the market will go up 8% a year. You can kind of do the math around how much you should be saving and putting in to low-cost index funds. So that's the goal. You want to be rich. You want an absence from anxiety. You want to be able to live well without having the obligation. If you decide to keep working, which I would suggest anyone does, it's

It's a choice. And that in itself is like a, when I sold my company in 2017 and I was finally kind of done, done, done, I felt like I exhaled relief for a good two years. It was just like, Jesus Christ, now this is all things I wanted. I get to choose. Just to digress, one of my role models, a guy named Barry Rosenstein, a Sarjana partner, said there's three buckets in life. There's things you have to do. You're biggest investors in town, you have to do it.

You get invited on Joe Rogan and this is the date, the window, you have to get there for that date, right?

There's things you want to do. Oh, I'm going to Cannes to the Creativity Festival or your mates are meeting up in New York, all your friends from the UK, right? You want to do that shit. And then there's things you should do. My coworker's kid is having a wedding. I really should go to this. It's South by Southwest. I got invited to a party with all these podcasters. I should go and network. I should, I should, I should.

The great thing about having economic security, and Barry taught me, is he said, "You can totally delete the should bucket. I no longer do things I should." And it's actually a bit of a point of tension with my partner, but she'll often say, "Oh, we should do this. They're nice people." And I'm like, "I don't want to do this and I don't need to do this. I should do it, so I'm not doing it." And that is so liberating to just say, "Okay, there's just some things you have to do. The stuff you want to do, that's easy, but get rid of the should bucket

But the algorithm itself or the equation itself is the following. The first is focus. And it goes back to what we said earlier. Find something that you're naturally good at that you can become in the top 10 or top 1% in an industry that has a 90 plus percent employment rate and focus on it. I hate side hustles.

Side hustle is fine for exploration. If you're not happy with your main hustle and you can't give it up because you need the money, but it's exploratory. And if your side hustles are going on too long, it means you got to change your main hustle. Because I would bet, and I'm fairly confident the research shows this, that the incremental 10 or 20% effort reinvested into your main hustle will provide greater return than the distraction caused by an incremental side hustle.

So find something you're good at that you could become great at through focus. And that's your job. Find that thing. That's not easy. The rest is the product of the following. And this is probably the wrong word, but I like the word. I said stoicism. Recognize there's something's out of your control. My company went chapter 11 in 2008 after Wells Fargo analysts pulled our credit line because they did some equation showing that the market recently was going into a credit crisis. I can't control that.

I can't control that I got, in some ways, a lot of my wealth since 2008. It isn't my fault. The market's ripped up. But I can control my spending. I can recognize that no one's thinking about my shit as much as I'm thinking about my shit. And I don't probably need a BMW at a young age. The first thing I did with my first bonus...

At Morgan Stanley, I got a $28,000 bonus. I went and bought a $35,000 BMW and I hung swimming goggles from the rear view mirror. And despite the fact I didn't swim thinking that would, you know, impress women. And I thought about it. I thought, okay, of course you're not smart enough to do this, but if I had just bought a Hyundai for $12,000 and invested the other 20 in the markets, I think that money would be worth like 3.1 million now.

So recognize there are some things within your control, specifically how much you spend, how much you save, being thoughtful about trying to be disciplined about putting some money in low-cost ETFs and index funds. You do have some control. Focus on the things you can control. The next thing is time. One of our species' great flaws is that because for the majority of our time on this planet, we haven't lived past 35, we just can't calibrate time.

And strategy answers one question, what can I do that's really hard? That's basically leaning into your advantages. When you're young, you have one advantage, you have time. Most young people at 25 don't really recognize two things. One, they're probably going to be here for another 80 years at this point, if they're 25 right now. And, and this is the hard part, and you have to ignore your brain because your brain isn't wired this way. It's going to go a hell of a lot faster than you think.

It's just I look at you and I'm like, "Oh, I'm his age." Because I was 30 or whatever the fuck you are yesterday. "Wow, life has gone so slow," said no one ever. And if I could give you a magic box at 25 and said, "If you find a thousand bucks to put in here in an instant, and it will feel like an instant in 30 years, you're going to have 12, 16, 24,000." What kind of effort would you make to find that thousand bucks?

The power of compound interest is amazing. I've been doing, I'm kind of onto this idea of at some point we're going to move back to the U.S. And in New York, you signal with your clothes, your home, but you also signal with where you send your kids to school. And I'm a narcissist and a big ego. And I thought, okay, I would want my kids to go to First Presbyterian or Grace Church or sort of these two Tony schools downtown. The tuition is 62 grand. It's probably more than that in the interview.

When we were here 10 years ago, they asked you how philanthropic you are, which is how much money are you going to give us? But college is 62,000. You're the people who don't spend any money or give any money. Now, why do you do that? I bet for two-thirds of the people that send their kids there, it's a sacrifice. Probably a third don't care. It's like they're so rich in New York, they just don't care.

But if you're talking about $62,000, you're really talking about $100,000 at least pre-tax. I mean, it's real money. That's real money every year. And if you've got three kids, $300,000. So for people, it's a financial strain, which you could argue puts strain on the whole household. Kids pick up on that strain. And why are you doing it? Well, I want to give my kids everything. Well, what's everything? Well, I want to give them the best chance to get in a great college. Okay, why?

So they can have more options than I did growing up. What do you mean by that? What do they get? Well, a better job, more opportunity. Well, why do they need more opportunity and a better job? Well, so that at the end of the day, they can do what they want and maybe get some economic security and afford a home and have a family and have economic security and have an absence from stress. Okay, got it.

Instead of sending them to First Presbyterian and Grace, and I've heard you talk about this, there's a lot of research showing that the best school for kids is the one closest to their home. And then reinvest that commute time and studying, sleep, play, and try and be disciplined. Take that $62,000 a year from the age of four to 18 and invest it in low-cost ETFs. On average, they've returned 9% since 2008, 8%, now 11% since 2008, and then they've returned

8% since the beginning of the market. Assume it does, 8%. Assume you are wrong. You sent that kid to public school and you screwed up. They didn't get into the best college. They ended up with a mediocre career. They have trouble buying their first home. They don't have, they can't live the life that you got to lead or that you really hoped for them. Here's what's going to ease your pain. If you were disciplined and reinvested that money you would have spent on Grace Church, by the time they are 35, you'll have $5.3 million to give to them. That will ease a lot of economic anxiety.

So I would just love to have a banner that says public school or 5.3 million. You know, it's, it's, or public school and 4, 5.3, like grace church or 5.3 million. Cause people just don't realize how, how, how fast time goes and how powerful compounding is. And then the last thing, and this is something, you know, do as I say, not as I do. It really killed me a couple of times, took me from wealthy to not wealthy. I've been rich three times. This is the third time. And I'm really hoping it sticks this time.

But the first two went away and it's because I didn't understand diversification. I always assumed that if I threw myself into anything, that I should go 110% in not only with my time, but my capital and that anything I devoted 110% of me to, because I was so awesome, that I could move mountains. And you need to recognize that market dynamics will trump individual performance all of the time. Most of my success and my failure is not my fault. And

The way you protect against that is diversification. And now, so for example, I don't put more than 3% of my net worth in any one investment.

And last week, if you'd asked me what is the best investment you had that has the most potential to be a 10Xer, I would have said it's this company. I invested in this healthcare company that does preventive medicine through text-based messaging selling into the enterprise. Baller CEO, tier one VC, huge, huge hitters, investors. Had to elbow my way in to get in. What a thrill I got to invest. Went out of business last week. Zero. Zero, right? My investment goes to zero.

But here's the thing, it bummed me out for about an hour because diversification is your Kevlar. Okay, I lost 3% of my net worth. It doesn't mean anything. Whereas in 2008, when I was running or when my biggest investment was a public e-commerce company called Red Envelope, which was doing really well at the time, when I met with my investment bank, I think I owned 10 million in stock. And I said, well, how much can I borrow against it? And they said, you could probably borrow 3 million. And they said, what are you going to do with it? Buy out? And I'm like, no, I'm going to buy more Red Envelope stock.

And Steve Ballmer did the same thing with Microsoft, and it worked out. You should assume you're not Steve Ballmer, because when my company went bankrupt, it meant that I owed $3 million. I went from being worth $10 million to owing $3 million. The tax on my emotional and mental well-being was enormous. And diversification is your Kevlar.

Because you don't need to be a hero. You don't need to find the needle in the haystack. You can buy the whole haystack and again, see above, time will go fast. You'll be financially secure. And Kahneman wrote about loss aversion theory. The joy you'll get from being smart enough to pick NVIDIA two years ago, which most of us were not, the joy you'll get of like a lack of diversification and the potential upside it offers is a fraction of the pain you will feel when NVIDIA gets cut by 90%.

So for your own financial well-being, much less your own mental well-being, embrace diversification. Because now I just don't, I don't want to say I don't think about my investments, I'm constantly looking for new opportunity.

But because I never put more than 3% in any one thing, it's like, give me your best shot. I can take anything. It's a bullet to the chest when it goes to zero. But I got Kevlar. Yeah, it knocks me off my feet. And then I get up and I got a bruise and I'm like, I'm fine. Nothing's ever critical, much less fatal. Whereas before when I got shot in the chest in 2000 with a dot bomb explosion or implosion in the great financial recession in 2008, I got a bullet to the chest.

I almost never could get up again. I came very close to just never getting up again. So focus, find what you're good at, double down on it, diversification, stoicism, save more than you or spend less than you make so you can save and appreciate just how powerful time and compound interest is. And the way I would wrap it up is I know how to get you rich. That's the good news. The bad news is slowly,

And then it's all wrapped in, and I didn't know how to put this into equation, but I call wealth a full person project. And that is there's a myth that really wealthy people crawled over other people to get there, that they're billionaires lighting their cigars with $100 bills. That's bullshit.

The majority of self-made people are actually good people. They're high character. And the reason why is if you want to be really wealthy, you need to collect allies along the way. People have to want to put you in a room of opportunities, even when you're not physically in the room, they want to give you the benefit of the doubt.

They want to go easy on you when you fuck up. They want to include you in deals. They want to come to work with you. They want to present opportunities to you. And the only way that's going to happen is if you show generosity and character from an early age. So like I said, greatness and wealth is in the agency of others. It's interesting to think about the stuff that doesn't appear on a balance sheet, the difference between working hard and character.

And just how much of a lever that is, you know, coming from running nightclubs for forever. All we had were our networks. That was it. That actually was the primary asset. It's the reason why events companies can't just pick up and move themselves somewhere else because you don't own anything beyond your reputation in the local geographic net.

of that particular city. We go from Newcastle where we've got one of the biggest events companies in the north of the UK and we go to Birmingham. Well, who the fuck's Voodoo Events? Who the fuck are you? You don't know us. There's a Voodoo Events that's been there for 15 years with some guy that's met and shook hands with a million people. I met a million people on the front door of nightclubs. That was all that we knew. And yeah, thinking about, I mean, that's a good point. How would you advise young guys and girls

How can people become better networkers? What are the skills of being a good networker? I bet you know more about this than me. I would say it's being friendly, being open, being honest, transparent. And quite frankly, I find the key to punching above your weight class is not, I mean, sure, it's grit. It's some talent, but more than anything, I think it's the willingness, and maybe this is grit, to endure rejection.

If you're a club promoter, you've got to be comfortable going up to strange women and saying hi and introducing yourself and saying there's a great party here or putting up with some douchebag asshole who's spending a lot of money and giving you a hard time and putting your own ego aside because he bought a bottle. He thinks he's, you know, fucking Prince Charles. You're just going to have to be willing to get out a spoon and eat a lot of shit.

And I've always said to the kids in my class, and I tell the following story. When I had just moved to New York on weekends, I go down to South Beach in Miami and I got an apartment in the continuum and I used to go out and I went to the Raleigh Hotel and I walked in and I saw a woman I was very attracted to. Anyone was going to be attracted to, she was very attractive. And I promised myself, I am going to speak to that woman before I leave.

This hotel and it was the middle of the day that a DJ was a pool party at the Raleigh hotel. And I'm like, oh fuck, she's talking to it. She's with a woman and a guy. I don't, I don't know how to like open. And I walked out and I was at the valet and I'm like, fuck, you promised yourself. So I went back and I just went up to him right, right up to him and said, where are you guys from? Anyways, long story short, 18 months later, you know, our son's middle name is Raleigh.

And what I tell people is, unless you're willing to take uncomfortable risks, you're never going to put yourself in a position of economic or professional or romantic success. Or let me put it this way, you're never going to punch above your weight class. And so your ability to endure rejection, your ability to put yourself in uncomfortable situations is absolutely, you know, people have different words for it, scrappy.

Right. But if you want, unless you have an unbelievable certification and you come out, like if you come out of MIT business school and you're an AI prompt engineer, you don't need to have much grit. I mean, maybe you got grit going there, but Microsoft's coming for you to offer you a world of opportunity for the another 99.9% rest of us get used to emailing people who will not email you back. And then when they say they're not interested, assume that that means they want to hear from you a month later.

right? The secret to my success is rejection. I applied to nine schools, business schools. I got into two, really just one. One put me on the waiting list. I can't tell you how much rejection I've endured from women. I mean, it's staggering. I ran for sophomore, junior, and senior class president. I lost all three times. And based on my track record, I decided to run for student body president where I went on to, wait for it, lose.

And I've started nine businesses. Most of them have failed. One out of seven businesses succeed. So I started nine and two won. And that's all you need. All you need is one good mentor, a few good friends, one wonderful mate, one business that works. But to get there means putting yourself in a position of rejection over and over and over. And here's the thing. It sounds easy.

Most people will not do what you did in Newcastle or was it Newcastle? Is that what you said? They're not going to go up to strangers and say, hey, there's a great party Friday night. You should come. Here's the thing on it. Texting back and forth. Give me your credit card if you want a table. I mean, people just, the majority of people, 99% of people will not do that. That's why in any company, the most overcompensated people relative to their IQ and their work ethic are the salespeople.

And this is what they have in common. They either played with the wrong toys or the right toys, and they will get out that spoon and start calling people that don't want to hear from them and then following up, pretending to be their friend, being nice to them when they're not nice back. That is the key in my view to success. If you're Kanye or Madeleine Albright or Stephen Hawking, you're going to be fine.

Assume you are not that person. A much more reliable route to success is just resilience and an ability to eat shit. I went back in. There's a way that you can view on your phone. You can see the number of messages that you've sent and received on WhatsApp. And I went in before I wiped it when I exited the events company. I went in and I'd sent and received. I'd received 6 million and sent 4 million WhatsApp messages while I'd been on that platform.

last phone, 4 million WhatsApp messages. And almost all of them had been sent like via fingertip. When I first launched this podcast, I went through, I think I might have about a thousand people in my address book. And I went through every single one of them and sent them the same message, which was, Hey, I've just released this podcast. Would you mind subscribing on Apple podcasts to a thousand different contacts? Most of whom I hadn't seen for forever, but that was just like baked into the blood of what I'd kind of done. That was part of the

It was just par for the course. You message random people. That's how you get them to come to your nightclub. So yeah, basically what we're saying is everybody should become a club promoter for a couple of years and then they can be- I think there's, I would love my kids. I want to do, I'm really hoping that the election in America turns out one way. And I'm thinking about taking my 16 year old to do canvassing. Canvassing is knocking on doors and trying to get people to register to vote and then telling them, hi, I'm here with the Biden campaign.

And a few times there's a pit bull and there's someone who is not a Biden supporter. And it is really uncomfortable and really unpleasant. And you have to be polite and they slam the door in your face and then you have to go to the next house. I think that is really important for a young person to learn those skills, to recognize that was really uncomfortable. And then 10 minutes, they realize I'm fine.

The first time it happens, you're traumatized. The second time it happens, you're like, whatever. Third time it happens, you're angry at the person. By the time the 20th time happens, you're like, I don't care. I'm fine. I'm fine. Oh, you can laugh about it. Yeah. I'm just, I'm fine. That is an unbelievably powerful skill. And what you did, I mean, I did something very, every business I've ever started. I started a strategy firm when I was 26, trying to sell strategy engagements to

into Fortune 1000 companies. And I would write a letter. I would sit down and I would write a letter to William Snowman and say, the growth potential in this brand is West Elm office. Home office is going to be huge. West Elm is perfectly positioned for it. Here are the SKUs. Here's your distribution strategy, your capital strategy, how you would signal. And I would basically do a strategy engagement. And then I would send it via FedEx to

I, you know, this was word processing, you know, not a lot of email back then. Some email, not a lot. This is 30 years ago when I was 26 and I'd send him a letter with this like strategy engagement and say, this is free. And the next one, if you have other big, hairy questions you want answered, you know, call me.

And most of the time you're working, you're putting in, I don't know, four, eight hours to write these things up. I can do this stuff pretty quickly. I have an aptitude for it. And most of the time you never hear back. You call them and the assistant would say, oh yeah, we found it. We don't know what it was. We threw it out. Please don't call us again. And occasionally I would get a meeting with the CEO of Levi's. He'd bring me in and say, we're trying to figure out the gray market problem. People are buying 501s and JFK and taking them to Germany. And

You know, consulting is give me your hardest questions and I'm going to try and answer them thoughtfully. And I built a big consulting firm by cold calling CEOs. And I wouldn't just cold call them. I do a prospective engagement for them. And most of the time it was kind of humiliating. Let me get this. I spent all Sunday telling people.

telling dryers ice cream, how they should discover new flavors and that they should be thinking about using Nestle for their distribution, all this shit. But occasionally it would hit. If you're not willing to do that, never going to punch above your weight class. How important is physical fitness to financial health?

Well, you know the studies here. The thing that Americans have most in common, unfortunately, is obesity or overweight. The thing Fortune 500 CEOs have most in common is they work out every day. It's not Ivy League schools. It's not even gender. It's not race. According to the 500 Fortune 500 CEOs, about 485 of them work out five times a week. They don't even work out every other day. They work out almost every day.

So, I mean, you're the prime example of this. You prioritize. I would imagine other than this podcast, you prioritize fitness probably over everything. And look, less mental illness, more attractive to potential mates. You signal...

I mean, I even think, I'm curious what you think here, but in terms of the mating market, I think aesthetically and instinctually people are drawn to men who look strong or fast because they're younger, more likely to survive with someone strong guarding the cave or whatever. But in addition to that, even in modern day, women are still attracted to very strong men because what it says is I can commit to something. I have discipline. I show up.

I have the ability to get home at a reasonable hour without getting fucked up every night because I'm going to work out the next day. I really like myself, which means I'm capable of liking someone. And if I really like myself and respect myself, I likely can like and respect someone else. Yeah, I think physical fitness and going to the gym is as much about the lifestyle and the kind of person that you are in order to be able to achieve that physique as

The signal of that is it is the actual way that your body is going to feel when you've got your clothes off. You know, you can, you're reliable, you're dependable. You are able to use your own agency to do things. You're self-motivated. You have a routine. You are able to deal with discomfort and pain, which is kind of in itself sexy and reliable. All of these things. Yeah. I just think it's, um,

And not only that, it's been my antidepressant. I have sort of this, I don't know if you have this, I don't know. You know, I struggle with anger and depression and I've finally gotten better at managing it. And I can recognize when I'm going into a dark place. I just start getting really, I start having really ugly thoughts. I'm pissed off at people all the time, really angry at myself, see everything just really dark. And I'm like, oh, okay, I'm going dark.

And right when I have that feeling, I'm going dark. I know I have a method for how to deal with it. And I use an acronym. It's called SCAFA. And the first thing is sweat, like sweat right away. If you're in that dark place, sweat right away. I find sweating is like restarting a computer. Like, I don't know what the fuck's going on. Turn it off and on. That's what I do. I reset my brain by sweating. A C is clean. I try and eat really clean. I stop eating out.

I find all the preservatives, the sugar, the shit, the salt to basically have a food explosion in your mouth for whatever reason I think is not great for me mentally. A, abstinence. And what I mean by abstinence is abstinence from THC and alcohol. I love both of those things. I'm pretty good at them. But if I'm in a bad headspace, I just give my sensors a break from that stimuli.

F for family, I find being around my boys is really healthy for me because my boys and children generally are so awful and so demanding that it forces you to take yourself out of yourself. You don't have the luxury of focusing on how

how upset or pissed off you are because your kids demand your full attention. Less so as they get older, but specifically when they're younger. And then the A, last A of SCAFA is affection. I will tell my boys, I'm not feeling really well. And when I'm not feeling really well, I want you to be affectionate with me. What does that mean? When you sit down on the couch, I want you to throw your legs over mine. I want you to sit close to me on the couch. I want to watch TV with you. I've told my kids, especially as a little bit older, sometimes I get

you know, upset and down. And it really helps me to be close to you guys. And they're great about it now. And not like that, even when I'm not, not upset, they're really, we've gotten kind of used to, we've normalized affection in my household, which is like, which really is my favorite. That's amazing. Oh, it's wonderful. It really is. I didn't grow up in an affectionate household. My parents were British and Scottish and they just didn't. And I could tell my mom really wanted to hug me. I could just tell she just wanted to, but kind of,

It was just hard for her because she just hadn't been raised that way. My dad used to, his way of affection was he'd scruff up my hair, but I could tell he also wanted to hug me. But that, and then also affection with my dogs. You know, when I'm down, I let my dogs on the couch and let them just kind of, you know, dogs just want to lie on you, basically. They'll just like wrap themselves around you. But I have...

I have a means of getting me out of that dark place of arresting that downward spiral. But this all comes back to the first thing, hands down, sweat. And when I'm traveling and I have jet lag, the first thing I try and do, and it's really hard, sometimes I do, I mean, last 48 hours I've been in London, Las Vegas, then here in New York. As soon as I get somewhere, I try to do a little bit of exercise or resistance training, even if it's just doing 100 pushups. But it's such a gift because basically the way I see it is you have this monitor in your brain saying, are you adding any value?

And the bad news is it's on 24 hours a day registering if you're adding any value. The good news is it can be easily fooled. And if you do a ton of pushups or start sweating, it's like, oh, he's hunting prey. He did a thing. Yeah. And he's hunting prey. He's building housing. He's important to the community. Let's keep him...

emotionally stable, let's release a hormone that clears out the bad cholesterol. Oh, they're caregiving. They're being affectionate. We need those people around. Oh, mentally stimulated with a crossword puzzle or working really hard. This person's making key decisions. You want to die? It's pretty easy. You don't need to shoot yourself. Just do a whole lot of fucking nothing alone. Just do nothing alone. Don't work out. Don't move. Don't talk to people. Just be alone doing nothing. And the security camera in your brain is going to go, you're adding no value. We'll take care of this.

How have you learned to forgive yourself when you fall short? You've got high standards. You want to achieve lots of things. How do you not castigate yourself too hard when you fall short of those high standards? You're positioning it in a generous way where like, I have high standards for myself. I think it comes from a worse place. I think it's just chemical. And as I think about depression, I listen to Sam Harris a lot. And look, the past is the most immutable thing ever, right? There's literally nothing we can do about it. And I spend way too much time in the past.

I'll think about what we did here and I'll realize two, three, four things that could have been better, and I'll think about it way too much. I was on stage yesterday in Vegas in front of 2,000 people

I used the word fuck too much. I was too profane. I was fine. It went really well. But I'm like, do I really need to drop F-bombs five times, maybe once or twice to make a point? But why am I being so profane? There's probably 5% or 10% of the audience who's religious who I just sort of really turn off. And I'm just like, on the whole flight home, I'm just like, okay. I mean, I'm not learning from it. I'm like beating myself up. And I'm constantly saying,

constantly in the past. And then as someone who's successful, I'm constantly in the future. I know exactly what I have to do tomorrow for my newsletter. I'm already thinking about ways, turns of phrase. I know what I do when I get off this podcast. I'm going to hit Google Doc. I've already had a couple new thoughts. And that's important.

But the fear, right, is you get to the end. And as an atheist, I do think at some point I'll look into my kid's eyes and know our relationship's coming to an end. The fear is like, wow, I was so much in the past, so much in the future that I was never really there. It's like, did my life happen, right? And so what I've tried to do is I've tried to learn from my colleague, Adam Alter at NYU, who said the biggest regrets are the dying. I mean, these are people, he goes into palliative care and he talks to people who are days away from death.

One, they wish they'd stayed in better touch with their friends. Two, they wish they'd led the life they wanted to lead, not the life that their parents wanted or society wanted. And then three, first and foremost, they wish they'd been less hard on themselves. They wish they'd been kinder. They wish they'd taken stock of their blessings and allowed themselves to be happy. And that really haunted me when I heard that. I'm like, I'm trying to refuse the failure of getting to the end

and being stupid. And I'm reading Bill Maher's book. Bill Maher is sort of a role model slash hero of mine. And it's so funny when I say that on Threads. Threads is so woke. People just come for me and call him a messiah. I'm like, Jesus Christ, Bill Maher is not the problem. But in his book, he has this great line and he says, I can't imagine anything stupider than people focusing on what's wrong with their life. And on a scale of zero to 100 on a balanced scorecard, I'm running at about a 97 or 98.

I mean, people who I love immensely, who love me immensely, economic security, I'm healthy, I live in New York. What do I love? I live in London. Where am I? And I am so focused on the two or three points that aren't perfect. And that is just, you know what that is? That's stupid. And I'm trying to make sure that I don't really regret at that moment going, oh, I failed. I failed. So I'm

Bottom line is I'm trying to forgive myself. And also what the Stoics say, no one's thinking about your failures as much as you. Something that really helps me is it saying nothing's ever as good or as bad as it seems. And whenever I screw up, I'd said something really stupid and it bored me. And the other day I was trying to be funny and it was just offensive. I'm like, oh, fuck. And what I realized is like, okay, put yourself in the shoes of someone in that room. And generally what you find is when you do something stupid or say something stupid, people go, oh, that was stupid.

And then about three seconds later, they go back to thinking about themselves. And the stupid thing that they did recently. Yeah, they're just, and they're totally focused on themselves. And all you have to think about is when someone does something embarrassing, yeah, you go, oh, that was stupid. And then three seconds later, you're back to you. And just realize no one's thinking about, I mean, think about the people. Think about the most successful people in the world and how many just ridiculously fucking stupid or bad things have happened to them in terms of scandal or

Said things the wrong way or behaved inappropriately. I mean shit that just would have brought most people down and the reason they're successful Is fairly and fairly short-ordered and more than the move on and they're like, oh I'm awesome again. I'm awesome. All right. I'll run for president again I caused an insurrection. Okay. So what I've been I've been found guilty of rape. I'll run for president again I mean shamelessness, you know that at that point it's no longer a superpower. You're a villain but the willingness to the ability to forgive yourself is

you're going to really wish you'd embrace that much earlier at an older age tactically what does that look like to you when you're trying to do that because i i don't disagree i'm very harsh on myself i have a hard time feeling proud about the things that i do if there is something that goes well i will find part of it that has gone wrong gone badly uh i always have this weird ambient sense that i'm in trouble that i've done something wrong that like that that that's anxiety that

that someone's mad at me. I've got this sort of ambient sense that someone's mad at me. And yet I think all of the things that you've just explained there, look, we only have the present moment. I don't need to be in ruminating about the past. I don't need to be in fearing the future. I have this life right now. Everybody that's listening, these are the golden years. How do you bring yourself back to not ruminating about swearing too much on stage in Vegas or saying a shit joke in a board meeting or

What are the things, the practices, what's the SCAFA equivalent that you do to try and enjoy your life more? Well, I don't know if it's the right way, but it's my way. But I embraced atheism in kind of my 30s. I used to say it was an agnostic, which I think are just closeted atheists. And I thought, okay, I genuinely believe this is it. I don't think this is a dress rehearsal. And so if you're the mite on a plum on an unremarkable planet,

circling a fairly mundane star that's one of 10 billion stars and one of 100 billion galaxies, and you're here not even at a blink, it's like, why wouldn't you just squeeze all the juice of joy out of the lemon? Why wouldn't you just... You are so trivial, and you're going to be gone. I believe that. That's it. No one's ever going to think about you again. You're never going to take a run. You're never going to be with friends. You're never going to have sex with your wife again.

you're never going to feel accomplishment, you're never going to be able to help anybody else. So in that short amount of time, why wouldn't you just try and feel a sense of reward and joy, especially if you're born in America, which I was or can live in America, especially if you have people who love you. I mean, you're in the 99.99 percentile realistically. You're here in a blank.

Why wouldn't you do everything you could to recognize like some joy from it? It would just be so selfish, stupid, wasteful not to enjoy it, recognizing you're going to be gone. You're totally insignificant. So in this minute flash of significance or existence, why wouldn't you just, just like I said, just like squeeze the shit. I'm spending more money than I've ever spent. I'm like, well, okay, I'm either going to spend it or give it away.

And I'm absolutely loving it. And I know that sounds kind of crass, but I'm like, well, why wouldn't I? Literally, why wouldn't I? There's so many amazing things you can do with money. I'm trying to be much more open and emotive with my emotions. I see somebody I don't even know that well, and they do a great... I've met a couple, not celebrities, but celebrities, famous people.

And I see them on Sunday morning on their program and they make a great point. And before I'd be like, oh, that guy's a baller. He doesn't want to hear it. Now I'm like, you were fucking amazing. I'm like, God, you're so good. Or I do now, I try and do more of that with the young people in my firm. I try to make memos of myself. Makes me feel wonderful. Makes them feel great, especially young people who need a lot of watering. And I feel like I'm just racking up good feelings. And then the other thing I absolutely love is these, I forget what you call these photo albums, these AI photo albums on Apple.

where they play with schmaltzy music in the background, pictures. Yeah, I know what you mean. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can't wait. When I'm at the end, I want to make a lot of money, so I basically die at home with people I love surrounding me, and I'm going to do a shit ton of heroin, and I'm just going to play those Apple... I'm going to live my life again. And I love those things. And if I'm down, I just look at those things. It makes me feel majestic and nostalgic, but I lean into the emotion.

But just a recognition nothing's ever as good or as bad as it seems. And the recognition of a finite nature, the finite nature of life and atheism is very emboldening. It really liberates me. It's like, this is it, boss. This is it. What a failure if you don't enjoy it. What a failure if you don't forgive yourself. So I would say more than anything, my atheism has really kind of unlocked joy, for lack of a better term.

Yeah, there's a seriousness if this is the only time you're going to get to do it. You mentioned there about spending money. Given that you're someone who's been spending money for quite a while, what have you learned is and is not worth spending money on in life? Oh, well, the research is there. And you know this research. People overestimate the happiness things will give them, and they underestimate the happiness experiences will give them. I don't own a car, not because I'm concerned with the environment or because I'm trying to be less about shit. I just don't want to know anything to manage.

So I'm all about, I'm generous with everything except my time. And a car takes my time. I'm spending a ridiculous amount of money on travel. And not only going on to great places, but I'll call, my sister's turning 50. Called her, her husband, she has two kids. I'm like, we're going to Africa.

this Christmas, just fucking figure it out. The kids got quiet. They always have excuses. I'm like, no, no, no, no. We're going to Africa. We're just going to figure it out. It's going to cost an insane amount of money. Insane. And they do really well, not as well as me. So I'm paying for everything. It's going to be just a crazy amount of money. And I'm like, well, okay, why wouldn't I have the money? So experiences. I own a plane.

And if I always tell my friends, I'm a yes to everything with the right to back out. Oh, Formula One in Las Vegas? I'm in. I'm yes. I don't even check my account. I'm yes. And I didn't have any money growing up. I was on a plane five times, I think, before the age of 18. I vacationed two to three weeks a year up until the age of 45. I used to take

July 4th weekend and go to Europe or Thanksgiving because they didn't take that holiday. And I'm like, this is a chance to lap the competition by going to meet clients in London or Milan on Thanksgiving, Thursday and Friday because America isn't working, but Europe still is. And now I'm catching up. So you know the lessons, drive a Hyundai or don't drive a car and take your family to Africa. And also-

I'm doing a lot of virtues signaling right now. I'm giving a lot of money away, not because I'm a good person, but because it makes me feel strong. I don't do it anonymously. I want recognition. I want to go to the donor's party and have them call my name. It just makes me feel strong.

Makes me feel good. It makes me feel important. So experiences, giving money away. I hit my number. I'm trying, I'm thinking about how to write something or do something. I think everyone should have a number and then commit to like giving the rest or spending the rest. I think spending money is actually quite powerful because it's not only fun, but it puts money into the economy. You can spend it on your employees. It's a ton of fun. And there's, I don't believe in hoarding wealth.

I think once you get to a number, people should have the right to be billionaires, but I don't understand why. Daniel Kahneman, again, did this amazing research showing that above a certain level of wealth, it's diminishing returns. So I figured out what is enough money where I probably can do anything I want for the rest of my life and have a little bit of money for my kids in case they need a house or if things keep getting worse for young people, which they

They steadily have happened over the last 40 years. Above that, I'm either spending it or giving it away. I don't see any reason why anyone would get any utility from being a billionaire other than hoarding resources from other people that need it more. And they'll make all these excuses that they're more productive and they invest and they do things. I just don't buy it. I just don't buy it. And I think you're going to be happier. I don't think there's any... There's some evidence that shows that kids of billionaires are a little bit fucked up. I

I don't know. So I like the idea of getting to your number and then getting off the hedonic treadmill and saying, "Okay, from this point, I'm going to do amazing things or I'm going to give it away." But there's no real reason to hoard wealth. We have six people in America that are worth more than the bottom half. That doesn't make any sense. It just

Kahneman shows that the difference between $40,000 a year and $60,000 is enormous for someone's well-being and happiness. The difference between $10 million and $100 million a year, there is no difference. There isn't. You're no happier. Now, there is a difference between $1 million and $5 million. I mean, you can do more things, but once you get to a certain level, so I'm trying to understand that because what I found is I've had such an absence of money my whole life that when I finally got it, I had a difficult time

not being focused on having more. Because the terrible thing about numbers is they're really easy to get your number. If you have X in wealth, you can easily imagine 2X. And also, you know someone that has 10X and you read about someone that has 100X. And you think, okay. It's the best computer game in history. And if the scale, if that number, as that number goes up,

The more prestige, relevance and random sexual encounters you have, you think, well, okay, I'd like three X those good things. You know what? On average, when you ask people, what do you think that you'd be satisfied with? Like, where do you want to bring your wealth into land? Like, what would you want to make every annually? Almost on average, pretty much everybody says about three times what I'm at now. It's

Someone says about three times. It doesn't matter if it's 50 grand or 50 mil, but you run about three times. And that's where that's where that's where I'd come into line. And it keeps growing, right? Once I get there, it always keeps going up that three times. Well, and then you get to three and it's like, ah, yeah, it wasn't 150. It was 450. All right. Taleb's got this phenomenal quote where he says the world is split into two groups, one who doesn't know how to start making money and one who doesn't know when to stop.

Oh, I love that. And in the words of the great philosopher Sheryl Crow, it's not getting what you want, it's wanting what you got.

And so what I tried to do was say, okay, I kept changing my number. If I'd had a million, but when I was 22, I thought if I ever have a million bucks, I'm done. I'll keep working. But Jesus Christ, I would feel good to have a million bucks in the bank. And then I'm like, okay, to have kids and a house and to retire and make sure you have access to the best doctors in case something goes wrong with one of your kids or maybe a second home or whatever, you need a lot more than a million. And then you're like, yeah, but I'd really like, you know, I don't want to vacation on the mountains. I want to vacation on the Aspen.

I mean, your number just keeps growing and then you're like, and the real budget busters are playing. But at some point, and everyone gets to pick their own number, I don't believe we should Robin Hood it. I do believe though that if you believe what Kahneman said, I do believe we should probably have a much more progressive tax structure. If you could tangibly change the life of people from 40 to 60,000 and someone's making 200 million a year,

You know, what is that? That's 10,000 households that you could make much happier and you're not getting any happiness from that incremental 200 million. I really don't understand why we don't have tax rates of at least 50, maybe even up to 80%. I think that for most of the people that are in that higher earning bracket, even anyone that's remotely smart, they have no idea where the fucking taxes go.

They have absolutely no idea. I think if you were able to draw a line between that person and this household in the suburbs of Chicago or Atlanta or wherever it is that this person, this single mother, I think that that would give people an awful greater sense of

look at what I'm contributing to. Yeah, it's taxed. What does taxes feel like? Taxes feels like it gets fritted away and some congressman is going to be able to get an additional fruit

fucking bowl to be able to put out at some wanky meeting that's unnecessary it's going to be wasted by this incompetent behemoth that is the the government you know i mean look at the uk the flash election that's just been called the flash election that's just been called uh you know no one thinks especially in the uk i know the people of america have a big problem with taxes except the obsession with freedom which i'm slowly becoming infected by too but

The UK, let me tell you, if you're rich in America, you are so much better off, even in California, than you would be if you were in the UK, because the UK will eat you alive when it comes to taxes. Yeah, I believe that.

Yeah. Speaking of which, side point, I've invited, you know, Dominic Cummings. Do you remember him? Yeah. I've invited Dominic Cummings on the show. I want to bring him on to have a conversation ahead of this flash election because he has got some real gossip and tea that will be. You're such a Brit. I know. Nobody here. No one in America. I barely know who that is. He's big time. He's cool. I'm going to steal your idea. I love the idea of someone.

who pays a lot of taxes and they say, "Okay, I just think that's a genius idea. I'm actually going to steal it." And it says, "You are paying for all the pre-K programs for the next three years in Evanston, Illinois." Yeah. Well, it turns tax into charity. It turns tax into philanthropy. 100%. Here are all the schools, maybe even giving them a choice. You're paying for the launch cable on the SS Ford carrier. And it comes with privileges.

Do you want to go be the mystery reader at these pre-K schools? Or do you want to spend the weekend on the SS Ford? But I love the idea of connecting really big taxpayers to what they're actually doing and maybe even giving them a bit of an option. It'll be a bit of a shell game because it's all going in the same place, but giving them, would you rather pay? Some of us want to beat our chest. I'm like, I want a Tomahawk missile that's going to be sent to this. Kill these fuckers, right? Some of us are angry.

Um, fine. You can, and you know what you get to do? You get to show up at an air force base and you get to sign your name on a selfie with it. Yeah. Break. That's right. Champagne over the nose of it and kill yourself. And other people like want to save the dolphins or whatever, you know, whatever you want, we'll, we'll put your name on or give you a sense for it and give you an opportunity. So you can kind of stratify or have cohorts of where people's money goes. I mean, you know, what was it that you were saying before you like giving money away because it makes you feel good, makes you feel good to give your money away. Well,

for the really rich people, that is what taxes are supposed to be. And what you're framing around this is this rich person could pay for this many people at the bottom end, or it could make life better for these people. But there's just no lineage. There's no sense at all. I don't know where my fucking taxes go. Well, and it becomes a game. I'm huge into tax avoidance. I feel like everyone, like a prisoner of war has an obligation to try and escape. I feel like every citizen has an obligation to pay as little tax as possible.

And if you're wealthy and can afford really sophisticated tax advisors, you can avoid a lot of tax. And the tax code is basically written for what I call super owners. There's a myth in the U.S. tax code that the rich don't pay their taxes. Actually, the rich super earners pay a disproportionate amount

of their income to earners. So you're an entrepreneur, so you're able to write off a lot of your expenses. The tax code loves entrepreneurs. But that investment banker I was talking about, there's no hiding his salary. He makes 10 million a year, boom, W-2 top line gross income, living in Connecticut, 52%. Go fuck yourself. 5.2 million right out of your check. You don't even see it, boom, it's gone. If he manages to save the money though to be

to buy real estate, buy stocks, he becomes an owner, A, it grows tax-deferred. So think you're a stock. If he's a stock and he's making 10 million in growth or income a year, but every year it gets clipped by 52%, very hard to hit wealth. Whereas if you own stock, Apple, Nvidia, Apple goes up 8%, 10% a year, it grows tax-deferred. And then when it gets taxed, it gets taxed at a lower rate. And if you're really wealthy,

When you're about to get taxed or you want the money, well, first off, you can probably borrow against it, put it into a trust and never, and then pass it on and the step-up basis goes up and never pay taxes on it. But say you want some of it, pretend you want to spend more time with your dad in Florida and move to Florida.

and save 13% in taxes, said Jeff Bezos. So there's all sorts of what we have done in America. As we've said, if you win the gold and you become a super owner, we're going to give you the silver and the bronze. The myth is that rich people don't pay their taxes. The super earner

Dad owns a chiropractic clinic. Mom is a baller, partnered a law firm. They make a million and a half bucks a year. In order to do that, they probably need to live in a major urban metro, usually in a blue state. They're paying 50, 52% in taxes. And so the idea that the rich aren't paying enough, they're like, are you fucking kidding me? But the top 25 taxpayers in the US, I mean, sorry, the top 25 wealthiest taxpayers in the US, depending on which study you look at, pay between 6% and 16% tax rates.

Corporate taxes are the lowest they've been since 1939. They used to account for 2.5% of GDP, now they're just 1%. So the people who get most screwed are young people. There's a lot of taxes on them. The biggest tax cuts they don't get to engage in, mortgage interest rate and capital gains, and also the super earners. I was on The View today, which is weird.

And of all the things that Whoopi wanted to talk about, she came backstage and was talking to me and she was like angry at how many taxes she's paying. I'm like, are you a closeted Republican? And she's like, I make a really good living here and I give half of it to the government and now they want to charge me surge pricing when I drive my car into the city. She was irate about surge pricing. Yeah.

And I thought, it's wealthy, powerful people like Whoopi. She has a lot of influence. Whenever she hears the argument that rich aren't paying their taxes, she's like, you're fucking crazy. And here's the thing. It's a nuanced argument. It's the super owners that don't pay their fair share and corporations, the super earners and the young get really screwed.

Scott Galloway, ladies and gentlemen. Scott, I appreciate the hell out of you. It's so good to see you everywhere at the moment. I do feel like you're kind of following me around the internet, which is nice. To resist judo, I'm like AOL in the 90s. Stick your hand in a cereal box and I'm going to pop out.

I appreciate you, mate. New book out now. Everyone should go and pick that up. Where else? Where else should they go to follow you on the internet? Like I said, boss, I'm everywhere. Prop G pod pivot with Kara Swisher. My newsletter, no mercy, no malice. But like I said, I'll find you. God damn it. What an apocalyptic end. There you go. I appreciate you. Thank you. All right, brother. Thanks, Chris. Congratulations on all your success. Yeah. Yeah. Oh,