How Scott Galloway Turned $8M into $120M Through Investing
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I've invested in every piece of the stack. I've done mezzanine, I've done public company investing, growth stocks, hands down. The best asset class is distrust. ♪ I feel like I can rule the world ♪ ♪ I know I can be what I want to ♪

I heard you say something recently, and I think this happens to us and it happens to you, I would have to imagine. You get pegged as just like an influencer or a thought leader. In reality, you've built a lot of amazing companies. And you talked about something the other day that you were with Michael Lewis. And at the end of the podcast, you were like,

You guys barely mentioned this, and it was like pretty astounding. You talked about or you told the story about how when FTX went bankrupt, you made some like pretty amazing trade. Can you tell Sean and I more about that story and what happened? You know what I'm talking about? Yeah. So I always like to...

counter it with how many times I've fucked up. So I bought Netflix at 10 bucks a share, I'm sorry, at 12, and I sold it at 10 and now it's at 1100. So I get it wrong all the time. I can't stand people who are constantly taking pictures of all their wins and posting them on social. So I get it wrong all the time. This one I got right. And that is, I'm that guy who reads bankruptcy filings and I read the FTX bankruptcy filing and essentially they list all their assets.

And when you declare bankruptcy, your creditors come in and say, all right, we're going to take all the assets. We're going to sell all the furniture, sell all the companies, sell all the IP, whatever we can sell. And then we'll divide it up and give it pro rata to the creditors based on the claims they have. There was approximately $8 billion in claims against a bankrupt FTX. And I went through the list of assets. And one of the assets was they had said they'd made a $500 million investment in Anthropic.

And I thought, wow. I looked, when they made the investment for the life of me, I couldn't find the valuation. I assumed the valuation was at about 5 billion. So I thought they probably own about 10% of Anthropic. It was trading, I estimated it was worth around 40 billion. So I thought, okay, they're staking Anthropic.

is worth 50 cents on the dollar. In other words, creditors claim 8 billion in claims against the company, and I believe that stake in Anthropic was worth probably 4 billion. So I thought, okay, eventually the creditors are going to get 50 cents on the dollar just on the Anthropic shares. At the time I started, at that time, you could buy claims against a bankrupt FTX for 22 cents.

So I bought $10 million worth of claims for $2.2 million. And it's better to be lucky than good. Crypto took off. Everything they had invested in went crazy. And it looks like we're going to get 160 cents on the dollar. So that was kind of an incredibly lucky thing.

It was also a good trade. There was a little bit of skill in there. I did my homework, but that's worked out. That's worked out really well. That's not luck. There's a lot of things you can call luck. That one is not luck in the sense that you're like, I was reading the bankruptcy claims. All right, that's action, not luck. And then you did the work to try to figure out like, okay, ballpark, what is this worth? But you just said it in passing, like, so I went and bought claims. Now, I consider myself...

not a complete novice at the world of business and investing. Where do you even go to do that? I didn't, I would, that wasn't even on the table. It's more exotic than buying a stock or even buying crypto, like going and buying bankruptcy claims. How does one even do that? And then how'd you have the confidence to say, all right, 10 million, because you didn't need to go, you didn't need to bet size that large. Right. So to be clear, I bought 10 million in claims. I purchased them for 2.2 million. So it wasn't easy. I typed in FTX bankruptcy claims and I found this guy named Thomas Brazile.

who's living in Italy and he was making a market in them. And Thomas had assembled a team that went, because when you buy a claim, you've got to make sure that the person who claims they own the claim actually owns it.

Then you've got to do some diligence. Then you've got to actually legally transfer the claim. You're sending money to a third party. I mean, there is risk here. So I contacted this guy who was making a market in it. And I said, I have some capital I want to put to work here. I'll give you 10% of the upside if you go buy these claims. And so he would...

every 48 or 72 hours say I found a basket or I found a claim of $383,000 and they want, you know, 90,000 for it. And I'd say, great. And I'd press, you know, yes. And he'd buy it and then transfer it into,

an account of mine. So yeah, it did take some real work. So this guy basically made, he basically at the time got like $200,000 worth of claims if you're giving them 10%. And then sounds like it went up about 8X from there. So this guy made a million bucks just brokering these FTX claims in a way for you. Well, it was a lot of work though. So Thomas is going to make

I mean, these are famous last words because the trustee hasn't distributed the funds yet. But it looks like we're going to get $15 million off of a $2 or $2.5 million investment, $12.5 million. He's going to make $1 million.

But what he did was real work because he has a lawyer and people following up and doing diligence. And if it sounds sketchy, like, okay, this claim doesn't seem real, or it feels like maybe this person sold the claim to multiple parties, that happened to us. There was a kid in Italy who had sold the claim to us and sold it to a large hedge fund in the Bay Area.

I had to go to the hedge fund and they said, oh, this is too bad. Let's just split it. It's gone up since then. And I'm like, well, no, who got the claim first? Who filed it first and got recognized? And it was me. And I said, fuck you. I want 100%. I want all of it. I didn't use those words. They seem like fairly nice people. But he was doing real work. But this was, I like this stuff. And the lesson here of all the assets, I've invested in every piece of the stack or every part of the capital structure. I've done seed.

First off, I founded companies, so that's the ultimate seed.

I've done seed stage investing, venture, growth, late stage. I've done mezzanine. I've done public company investing, growth stocks, mature companies. And then I've done distressed investing where I've brought companies or partnered with someone smarter than me to go find claims against a bankrupt company or bring a company out of bankruptcy. Hands down, the best asset class is distressed.

And it goes to a very simple notion of investing. The sexier an investment, the lower the returns. Venture's sexy. Everyone wants to hang out with Tom Brady and Gisele. No one wants to hang out with old people. And distressed investing, it smells like piss. It smells like urine. It's just like no one wants to hang out with bankrupt companies. It's ugly. It's complicated.

It reeks of death everywhere. This thing didn't work out. Do you remember? It looked like FTX. It looked like if it's trading 22 cents on the dollar, the market is saying this might all be worth nothing. Yeah. So I have found generally the sexier the asset class, the lower the returns. And if I was just an economic animal, I'd go back and learn a lot more about distressed credit. The biggest win I've ever had was bringing a consumer company out of bankruptcy. I partnered or-

I have a friend, Jason Mudrick, who runs a distressed credit shop called Mudrick Capital. And he 30Xed, we 30Xed on an event. Granted, it was six years and a nightmare. And we almost went to zero two or three times. So we ended up, that was my best investment ever. Yeah, which one was that? This is like the only nerd podcast on earth where we are like, oh, you've just, that's our sweet spot. Tell us this story. But I always have to match it with a loss. I'm in Oddity, which is this amazing AI beauty company. I own...

I don't know, a decent amount of shares. And I thought I need to generate some income here. I was bored. So I sold covered calls way out of the money, right? To try and collect rent. So stocks trading at, stocks trading at, I don't know, 40. I sell calls at 50 to generate some income, meaning that if long as it doesn't go above 50 in the next month, I'm fine. I hadn't sold covered calls in a long time. The next day it announced earnings and the stock went to 61.

So I've literally left like $2 million on the table selling covered calls, trying to generate income off this thing. And I should have been smarter. I should have done a little bit of research, known that earnings were coming up and known this is a great company and they're going to do really well. So in the last week, I've literally like puked a million dollars for no fucking reason because I didn't do due diligence.

All right, everyone, really quick. This is the third time Scott Galloway has been on MFM. And also, I read all of his books. I listen to all of his podcasts. I'm a huge fan of Scott's. And that's why we've had him on the pod so many times.

And HubSpot, they did something awesome. So they took the 23 best insights from the first two episodes, but also this one, the one you're watching or listening to right now. They took the 23 best insights, insights on wealth creation, on spotting good deals, on building relationships, and they put it all together in one really easy to read document.

And so instead of having to go and listen to all the other podcasts, which by the way, I think you still should, you could download their document to read all of the best stuff. And it's sort of like a cheat sheet or a guide on all the best stuff that Scott has said on MFM, all three episodes. So it's in the link below, or you can scan the QR code, but check it out. It's in the description. Enjoy the rest of the episode. Anyways, the company was a company called Enjoy. Enjoy.

And my mother died of a smoking-related illness, and a couple of my buddies said they were using a vape to get off of nicotine. This is like eight, ten years ago. And that they had quit smoking using this thing called Enjoy. The company had gone bankrupt. It was considered—it's called E&DS, Electronic Nicotine Delivery System. And the equivalent of the FDA in Britain—

sends these out for free if you're a smoker, because let me be clear, no one under the age of 25 or anyone who doesn't smoke should vape nicotine. It's not good for you. But it's much less bad than smoking combustibles with tobacco. Nicotine is highly addictive, but it doesn't cause cancer. It's bad for brain development. I don't want to suggest anyone get addicted to nicotine.

But I thought this is great. It's smoking cessation. We're getting in. We brought it out at a valuation of 60 million out of bankruptcy. My friend Jason is just this super smart, super aggressive guy. So you heard about this thing and then you Googled it and you saw it was bankrupt and then you're like,

I'm interested. What came first, the chicken or the egg? Was it Jason was going to go look or you found the company, then you found Jason? No, no, I wasn't that smart. I had heard about this company because two of my friends had quit using it. And then Jason called me and said, I'm about to bring a company out of bankruptcy. Have you ever heard of Enjoy? And I'm like, oh, yeah, I know the company and I like it. So I put two and a half million bucks in and he brought it out of bankruptcy for 60 million.

and said, "This is a regulatory play. We're the least bad actor here." There was Juul, which had gone up to like 10 or 15 billion in market cap, but was marketing to kids and selling bubblegum flavor and was just getting hammered correctly and justifiably in the press as addicting a ton of kids. At one point, about three years into the investment,

high schools in the Midwest were pulling the doors off of bathrooms because so many kids were vaping. And then the absolute low point was

there was a huge raft of kids going into emergency rooms with what was called popcorn lung. Yeah. And basically, kids were getting so addicted to vaping that they were buying the vape liquid in festivals and out of people's trunks. And people who were doing homebrew of this vaping liquid were mixing in, were cutting it with, I think, vitamin A acetate.

not recognizing that would have a really negative reactions on kids lungs. And by the way, and during that era, I knew people who worked there. I'm pretty sure they gave all like 1000 employees from the top to the bottom, 500,000 or a million dollar bonus to retain them as employees because all the press was horrible. And they had to like deal with this conscious of like, shit, I'm selling this horrible stuff. Okay. But I guess it's worth it if I get a million dollar bonus.

It was crazy. We really were. We weren't cool at all. Enjoy wasn't selling into teenagers looking to go to raves. Enjoy was selling into a trucker. I mean, the stats around smoking are crazy. One out of three people who buy a carton of cigarettes promise themselves it's the last time they're ever going to buy cigarettes. It is just such an incredibly malicious, mendacious, addictive. I think it's the second most addictive substance. I grew up in a household, just a quick parable about me.

I remember I never went to the doctor. We just weren't the kind of family that went to doctors. It was like Robitussin was our emergency room, you know, Robitussin, use Robitussin for everything. And I got so really sick with a lung infection, they took me to the doctor and the doctor said, "Okay, he's got a serious lung infection here, antibiotics." And also Tom and Sylvia, my parents, "You can't smoke."

So on the way home, we rolled down the window so they could smoke on the ride home. And then my dad went in first, got a wet towel, stuck it under my door jam, stuck me in my room so they could continue smoking. I mean, they were so radically, my mother died of a smoking related, they were so radically addicted to nicotine, or tobacco. Anyways, we brought it out.

for 75 million, popcorn long, and I'm like, and kids are dying. And not because of anything Enjoy or even Jewel was doing, but because vaping had become so big that now kids were buying black market liquid that was damaging their health. And I'm like, great, I'm this guy who claims to care about young men and I'm putting them in the fucking hospital. That was such an incredibly low moment for me

And I remember I resigned from the board because I'm like, I just can't stay on. I was on the board. I'm like, I just can't stay on this board. I was on the board of my kid's school and the headmaster was putting out memos warning of vaping. And I'm like, I am such a fucking hypocrite. And I tried to sell my stake and there was no market for it. There was no market for it. And Jason and the CEO, Ryan, were real visionaries.

and said, "This is all about an FDA play. We're the best actor in the space. We're selling to people who want to quit smoking." There's almost no youth complaints of underage people buying in third-party retailers. And they spent about 100 or 120 million bucks, I think, maybe a little less than that, trying to get FDA approval. And they thought, "If we become one of the three or four companies that has FDA approval around smoking cessation, this is a regulatory play."

Five, seven years later, 80 or a hundred million dollars. We get the regulatory approval and we sell the company for, I think, 2.2 billion to Altria. So that was a 30X on my investment. Does that mean you turned 2 million into 60? Two and a half into 75. That's fucking insane. I gave 25 away though, because of my guilt tax. So anyways, that hands down, nothing was ever like that. And total classic, ton of hair on it, almost went to zero.

regulatory play, really unsexy, bankruptcy, just all the shit that you wouldn't naturally, that most people just wouldn't want to get near. It was really, really difficult. And then just every, all the moons lined up and Altria came in and said, we have to own one of these companies. That's hands down been, other than the companies I've started and sold, which is hard work, as you guys know, that shit's hard. That's really hard.

That was the best. And let me match it again with another one. 98.6, this amazing healthcare texting company, preventive care by text message, Costco, big company signing up, three, five bucks a month. Anyone in the company can text them. I invested 5 million bucks and went to zero in 18 months. I mean, I've never lost that much money that fast.

All right, here's the deal. If HubSpot tripled the price, I'd be screwed. The reason I would be screwed is because my entire company is run on HubSpot.com. My website, my email marketing, my dashboards, how I track my customers, literally everything. And if they tripled the price, I would pay them more money. And that's because the product is so freaking powerful. My entire company is built on it. And so if you're running a business and you want to grow faster, you want to grow better, you want to be more organized, check it out, HubSpot.com. All right, back to the pod.

Did I hear a story about you doing a bankruptcy thing? Was it with Yellow Pages or White Pages or something like that? Yeah, Dex Media. That's probably not my second best, but my third or fourth. Really great CEO, a guy named Joe Walsh. And you're talking about Yellow Pages, the book. Yellow Pages, the things dropped on your porch. Amazing business.

Yeah, it's like 600 million in revenue and 280 million in EBITDA, but it was declining 12% a year. It's just advertising? Yeah, the local plumber. There's still a lot of people that in rural parts of America that get a phone book. It's almost gone, but the business still, it's like AOL dial-up. It's like, why would anyone have AOL dial-up? Well, people still do. Yeah.

my mom does there you go it's just 20 a month uh so again another jason magic investment i went on the board i invested i think i invested more than i think i missed about four million bucks and and i really like that board because i could add a lot of value i sort of understood the business and they were trying to transition to become a crm company because the core asset of the company was relationships with tons of small and medium-sized businesses and they started selling them calendaring and clienteling software

And basically we would go and buy the biggest Yellow Pages company in the South and the biggest Yellow Pages company in Canada, then the biggest Yellow Pages company in Australia. Are they like franchisees or is there one Yellow Pages or how does that work? Big companies. Like there was like one or two companies in Australia that were still in the Yellow Pages business. And they traded it two to three times EBITDA because everybody knew they were going away.

But you could basically buy these companies and then you would close the headquarters, keep the 30% of the best salespeople, and then let go of everyone else. And as long as you cut costs faster than 12% a year through consolidation, your cash flow accreteth.

And every year the stock price went up. And then what the management team did that's just staggeringly impressive is they were able to transition from a Yellow Pages company to a CRM software company. And they actually did it. So I think we bought in at like $2 or $3 a share in the stocks now. I don't know, at $15 or $20. I've already sold my stake. I think I had $4 or $5 to X there. I didn't 10X. But again, what is less sexy than Yellow Pages, right? Yeah.

And all the shit I invest in that sounds remotely cool, and I think this is a lesson for listeners. If you have financial capital, invest in the unsexy shit. And also, more importantly, your human capital. If you want to be an athlete, a rock star, a musician, an artist, a model, going to restaurants, nightclubs, just be clear, you're going to make a lot less money than someone at that same level of talent in a less romantic industry. If you're just in the top 90% of tax lawyers,

You're not in the bottom 10, just in the top 90, you can make a good living in tax law. If you're in the top 10% of actors, you make $40,000 or $50,000 a year. The majority of actors don't make a very good living. The majority, 83% of actors don't have health insurance because they didn't make $23,000 last year. And that's members of the SAG-AFTRA union who are the best in the world. If you're in the top 10% of tax law, you fly private and have a much broader selection set of mates than you deserve.

So just keep in mind, you want to do something sexy, fine. You better get a lot of psychic return because the financial returns won't be nearly as great as the person in that shitty, boring business who's almost as good as you, but is going to have a much, much bigger return on their human capital. All right, folks, this is a quick plug for a podcast called I Digress. If you're trying to grow your business, but feel like you're drowning in buzzwords and BS, then check out the I Digress podcast.

It's hosted by this guy named Troy Sandage. He's helped launch over 35 brands that drive $175 million in revenue. So if you want to get smarter about scaling your business, listen to I Digress wherever you get your podcasts. All right, back to the pod. So I agree with everything you just said. But at the same time, I have this like cocky part of me that's like, cool, yeah, but I'll still be in that top one or two percent. I'll still get there. And so I'm just curious, are you wired like that? Like, you know, knowing even knowing that.

You still play the, like right now you're playing the internet personality game. That's kind of like a Hollywood, that's like the Hollywood ratio, not the tax law ratio. You know, you're doing these exotic investments when, you know, the math would show us that just being a boring indexer and a compounder that way is going to work better than being a picker. But we do it because we like it. It's fun. It gives us these other returns. Plus it feels really good to be smart when you get it right. So like even knowing what you know, realistically, if you're 28 years,

whether you know that or heard that, would you do it any differently? - Yeah, but just to be blunt, and this is a story of privilege, I have access to deals that most people don't. And this is also gonna sound arrogant. I have an undergraduate degree in economics. I was a graduate student instructor in macro and microeconomics. I worked in fixed income at Morgan Stanley. I know more than your average bear about the markets. And I get deal flow that people don't get. People will call me and say, "Hi, I'm the CEO of this company and it's going public."

I would like you to be in the IPO. But when did that happen? I mean, was that happening during the Yellow Page era? Like, I mean, you've been successful for decades, but you've only been popular for what, eight years, 10 years? It's really just happened in the last 10 or 15 years. If I had it to do again, and what I advise young people, unless they have some extraordinary niche knowledge or access to deal flow that other people don't have, which is almost nobody,

hands down going to index funds and not only going to index funds, but make sure you're diversified geographically. My big theme over the last six months, and I've been saying this over and over, is that if you're just an SPY or in the NASDAQ and you think you're diversified because you're in an index fund, you're not. Because I believe the US is going to go flat for the next decade.

And if you look at the PE of 26 versus Germany at 22, Japan at 18, China at 14, and you look at the head up your ass, sclerotic, reckless, ridiculously fucking stupid decisions of this administration and how it's undermining our brand of rule of law and consistency, that is going to result in massive multiple contraction. And it doesn't matter how good the company is. If the broader market is engaging, is registering multiple contraction,

you can't outrun it. So I have been massively transitioning my US holdings into Asian, European, and also the only companies I invest in have at least 50% of their business abroad because I think the US is about to go into a 10 or 15 year down cycle. But to your question, would I do it again? If I did it again,

what I would do, quite frankly, is I would probably just buy residential real estate for rental. And to me, that's the most, it's not only a good return, but because our society is rejectionist and wants to, the entrants always wanna come up with a way to make it harder for the entrance. There's been such incredible nimbyism in America that continues that real estate just gets unnatural lift.

And so I think residential real estate over the long term, and there's very few investments you can lever up five to one. There's very few investments you can depreciate it two or 3% a year, regardless of they're going up in value. And also just from a mental wellness standpoint, I like the idea of being in investments that aren't marked every day. I check my phone way too much. I check my phone five or six times a day and I get all bummed out when my covered calls on oddity, I would have made a million bucks more. It bums me. I ruined my day yesterday.

Whereas the apartment rental units I own in Delray Beach, I don't know what they're worth today. Maybe they went down 10%, maybe they didn't. But I like, if I had it to do all over again, I probably just would have been taking all my excess cashflow and done massively diversified ETFs in all over the world. And I would have bought more and more units

residential rental real estate. You said something great I saw when I was prepping for this that you were talking about the sort of checking your phone every day. You're like, look, if you're... The stock market's a roller coaster right now and there's like a political sort of like circus going on. So it's easy to feel some type of way and you had a good point of view. I don't know if you said this off the cuff or if this is something you've sort of really thought about, but you were like...

You said something along the lines of, look, if you got your health, all right, you're at, you already got 51% of the game. If you have your health, let's start with that. All right. You got some friends, some family, you're having dinner with people like, you know, and you started sort of stacking back up rather than being like, cool, I'm going to mood swing along with the sort of like rolling average of the, of the index. You know what I mean? What's, can you, can you sort of like give your take on that? I paraphrased you.

Well, I've been reading some Buddhism recently, and I love this one thing I read really struck me. And that is the person with good health has thousands of problems. The person with bad health has one problem. And you guys are, well, you guys are younger than me. When I went into my 50s, something happens in your 50s, and it's really awful. Two or three of your friends die. Just like weird genetic shit pops up. I had a friend who was

healthy, ripped, handsome, happy, this weird nerve disorder, borosgline took him out. Another friend, we're in Tulum,

51, having a great time, great life, three kids, killing it professionally. Little bump on his head. What is that? I don't know. I got to go and check it out. It's leukemia, but they think they can get rid of it with pharmaceuticals. I don't need chemo or anything. Oh, it's not going away. I need chemo. Oh, it's come back stronger. I have to get a

stem cell transplant. And they basically give him a very intense, and then it's like, oh, it's back, I'm done, and he's gone. Like diagnosis to death, six months. And you realize like, okay, if you're waiting to have washboard abs, if you're waiting to find the perfect spouse, if you're waiting to have more money, don't wait. I mean, really try and take advantage of the moment, tell people you love them, be nice to yourself, be kind to yourself, enjoy yourself, because

It's going, I mean, you guys are sort of at the age where time starts to fall off a cliff. But I think a lot about the notion of freedom. I always thought that money would give me the freedom I wanted. And it has given me some freedom from the economic anxiety I've always had. And it's given me a lot of options. But what I have figured out as I've gotten older is that true freedom is releasing yourself from the conventions and expectations of a broader society around what I should write or what I should say or how I should condition something and say,

You know, I constantly, when I talk about young men or I talk about what I think is going on in the world, I feel a need to add a sentence such that it, I water down, I water it down such that the far right or the far left don't come for me and shame me. And I still haven't found the freedom of releasing myself from the conventions of expectations. Now, I still want to be kind because I like that. I want to be a good person, but I still fall, I still have a lack of freedom around really, my goal with my content is to catalyze

a productive conversation that shapes better solutions. And I might be wrong. The conversation I'm catalyzing, the way I catalyze it, I might get it wrong, but that's my goal. And yet I'm still too fucking worried about being shamed,

or getting it wrong or saying something stupid or disappointing people or not being liked by strangers so i still am not free so i think a lot about what does it mean as i barrel towards the end to have real freedom because if you're just focused on getting to a certain point and think that you're going to find the perfect x y or z no you're here to learn you're here to enjoy yourself you're here to be as kind as possible you're here to surround yourself with as many people

is possible who love you and let you love them. But I'm trying to get off this hamster wheel of constant ambition and engaging in true freedom. And I'm still not there. But do things, you know, I guess it's a weird, like, I act like a tough guy. This thing doesn't bother me. But then like, I'll see a comment and I'm like,

you know, I'll think about it late at night. I'm like, oh fuck. Like, did I, do I really look puffy in the face? You have this thing called the anti-Galloway index, or is that what it's called? Where, uh. Inverse Galloway, anti-Galloway, something like that. The inverse Galloway index. Does that bother you? Insult, sign of respect. How do you take that? Well, no, at the time, well, first off, anyone who takes pictures of a plane doesn't have a plane. Anytime someone's Instagramming you pictures of a Gulfstream, it's not theirs. Anytime anyone says,

I don't care what other people think. It means they're obsessed with what other people think. It's like when people say, I don't think about, I hate it when VCs are like, well, I don't think about money. They're fucking obsessed with money. They'd fuck their sister for a nickel. I hate it when people say, well, I don't care about money. I just wanted to build great products and everything would work out. Yeah, okay. It's like those douchebags that say they went to school in Cambridge rather than just saying, no, I went to Harvard. Well, good for you. It means you have rich parents, you shithead.

Am I a little angry today? Am I a little angry today, guys? A little angry? Touch angry-ish? When we hit the 40-minute mark, you really just like crescendo. It's like you're breaking away in the 100-meter dash. I think you're out of the investment or whatever it was called. It just kicked in. It's kicking in. You want me to make fun of you some more? It's up another 10%. No, like...

I would say the six or eight times I've had a quote unquote mental health episode where it's something that's really bummed me out and it's ruined my weekend and I haven't been able to enjoy my kids or whatever, it started online. Someone calls me Professor Genocide. I go on Morning Joe and I talk about my support of Israel and why I think they have a right to defend, you know, I'm very pro-Israel and thousands of comments that I don't care about children.

People start referring to me offhandedly as Professor Genocide. It fucking rattles me. There's just no getting away from it. And I don't, and I think some of that's good. I think if you're total, I've gotten much better. I let, I don't engage in comments anymore. I read the first 10 to get a feel for what they think and I try to learn from them. But what I found is most of the really vile content or comments, if you click on them, it's a bot. It's Dogface 101 with three followers.

So I try not to take it too seriously, but yeah, it still, it affects me less than it used to, but it still does affect me. It still has the ability to bum me out. But at the same time, you can't be a sociopath. It also makes me really happy. I get a lot of positive feedback and

And so I try and register that emotion as well. I try and appreciate that people are nice enough to take time and say something nice in the comments. And also, I get a lot of really constructive feedback. You know, like your work, really appreciate the effort you went into this. This I think you got wrong and this is why. And I learn from it. I don't mind that. I like that. I like pushback.

you know, as long as it's civil and thoughtful. But yeah, it doesn't, the notion that it doesn't get to me, oh no, it absolutely sometimes gets me. It just gets to me less now. I am a little less focused on the comments, the sewage system. And also I got off of X, which helps a lot. One of the things I think you're great at and like maybe,

You know, in politics, they have Jon Stewart. It's like somebody who's both funny and entertaining to listen to and like will speak truth to power. If you see something that he thinks is nonsense, I'm like, there's there's people like that in like, let's say, the political game. I feel like you are you do a little bit of that in the business world and whether it's big tech or it's things like that.

And you say, you said, you know, I don't feel totally free to kind of like say, you know, fully what I feel because I'm worried about, you know, maybe what other people think. Do you feel like there is anybody who is free? Like, you know, who do you look at and say like, okay, the way they're doing it is something I admire, right? Because your role is in some ways like you're a takedown artist sometimes. You call out bullshit. You call out something that's wrong. You want to catalyze that conversation, like you said, and like push us in a better direction. So inherently there's like a little bit of like,

finding negative things and calling them out or taking down something that's powerful but is going in the wrong direction. What about the other side? Like, is there somebody who you look at where you think like, wow, the way they're living their life, that's kick ass or the way this industry is going, I think that's really great. Like, what's the positive spin of that? Yeah, there's a lot. I'd say if there's one person who I really just admired, Sam Harris, I find he's so disciplined and so thoughtful and good and so unafraid.

He just doesn't—he's like really thinks through issues. He doesn't say them errantly or flippantly. He really does his work. And then when he thinks he has moral clarity around something, he's just unafraid and absolutely— Who else like that do you admire? Well, I admire them for different reasons. I think Matt Levine and Bloomberg. I just love the way he looks at the markets. I find it so interesting. I think Bill Cohen at Puck. I like the way he looks at the markets. I love—

Josh Brown and Barry Ritholtz. I did like a couple of Long Island guys talking about investments. You know, I just did a podcast with David Brooks and I love how he mixes spirituality with common to a man and community and he's more conservative. So I learned from him. There's people every day that I find their work really, really inspiring. So I don't, but I wouldn't say I have like one or, you know, specific role models I turn to, but there's so many people

people out there that I get a lot of inspiration from. You do this sort of like advice for young men, like, I guess like bucket of content. And I think it's pretty interesting. What's a message that you wish, like, if you just picked one message out of that bucket and you're like, God, I really wish people actually listened to this one or internalize this one. What's the one that you really wish you could just like, you know, if you could really get inceptus in people's brains, you think it would make the biggest difference?

So you're referring, I have a podcast called Office Hours. I found when I was teaching, you have something called Office Hours and you're a professor and people come to your office.

And they're supposed to ask you questions and say, well, I don't understand the brand core identity for the tech. No one ever came to me to talk about strategy or brand strategy. They came to me to talk about life advice or professional advice. Like uncle shit. You know what it's based off of? It's based off of the, remember the show Frazier, the call-in he did with Dr. Frazier at a call-in show? It's basically that. People can call in and ask anything about life or business.

Should I move to Houston? I'm engaged. I'm worried that my fiance can't move. I'm worried that our relationship's gonna, you know, whatever it might be. Or should I, should I, is it too late to buy Nvidia? I mean, it's all over the map and I enjoy giving advice. I think I'm good at it. The one piece of advice, if I could only give one piece of advice to young people, it's that nothing's ever as good or as bad as it seems. And that is a lot of your success and a lot of your failure isn't your fault. And at the end of your life,

And there's research here. When you're on your deathbed and that's it, you're not going to take a walk on the beach. You're never going to be with your wife again. You're never going to get to laugh with your kids again. And I'm an atheist and I get a lot of power from my atheism. The things you're going to regret, you're not going to look back and say, I regret that this happened. What you're going to regret is how upset you were. And so recognize that when you get fired or you have an investment go bad or you have love that's unrequited or not returned,

or you screw up and you say something unkind or professionally, you just, you're not on the right path. Keep in mind, again, you're going to be upset at how upset you were, not at what happened. And at the same time, on the flip side, also recognize that when something really good happens to you, whether it's good health or you have an investment that triples or you get promoted, realize a lot of that isn't your fault.

And you should be, you're never more prone to a really stupid mistake than after a big win because you start believing your own press. So be humble, really be grateful, realize a lot of it is the fact that you were born at the right place in the right time and we're in the right position at the right time to do something. And just forgive yourself when things don't go well. Nothing's ever as good or as bad as it seems. Like try and look in the mirror and say, if you got fired,

I can add value to a company. If someone doesn't return your love, you know, I could make, look in the mirror, I could make someone very happy. Investments will come and go. I will find good investments. If I keep trying and I'm a good person, I work hard, I will achieve some level of economic security. Because again, it's just not, nothing's ever as good as bad as it seems. That's the one piece of advice I have.

So you guys know this, but I have a company called Hampton. Joinhampton.com. It's a vetted community for founders and CEOs. Well, we have this member named Levon, and Levon saw a bunch of members talking about the same problem within Hampton, which is that they spent hours manually moving data into a PDF. It's tedious, it's annoying, and it's a waste of time. And so Levon, like any great entrepreneur, he built a solution.

And that solution is called Moku. Moku uses AI to automatically transfer data from any document into a PDF. And so if you need to turn a supplier invoice into a customer quote or move info from an application into a contract, you just put a file into Moku and it auto-fills the output PDF in seconds.

And a little backstory for all the tech nerds out there. Slavon built the entire web app without using a line of code. He used something called Bubble.io. They've added AI tools that can generate an entire app from one prompt. It's pretty amazing. And it means you can build tools like MOLKU very fast without knowing how to code. And so if you're tired of copying and pasting between documents or paying people to do that for you, check out MOLKU.ai. M-O-L-K-U.ai. All right, back to the pod. ♪

You're reading Buddhism. You're talking about the end of life. The dog has chilled out. I've listened to you for a decade now. I enjoy this era of your thinking. The mushrooms. It's working. I've heard that you're into that and it's working. Dude, there's a hilarious joke. You know, Hasan Minhaj, the comedian, he had this great joke the other day. He's like,

He goes, your religious preference is directly tied to how well you're doing in life. He's like, no one loves Buddhism more than like a wealthy, wealthy, a wealthy white person. He's like, you know, Gwyneth Paltrow. Love it. Loves her some namaste. And then he's like, but when you're on rock bottom, welcome to Islam, baby. He's like Mike Tyson. When he's going through it, it converts. Like, you know, it's always that guy at that, at that rock bottom that they find Islam. He's like, I could just,

I know exactly what religion you have if I know how well you're doing in life. I know how well you're doing in life if I know your religion. 100%. Yeah, I get it. I want to ask you, I think three years ago, I forget exactly when, you were like, ChatGBT, it's more like GLP-1s. Like, that's the thing. And you're a bit early on that. But what other company, brand, movement do you think is quietly crushing it right now that not a lot of people are talking about it?

Well, wouldn't that be nice if I knew that? But that's what you do, right? Every year in your newsletter, you make some pretty wild predictions. Surely you have a notes app that you're writing down ideas on what your prediction is going to be at the end of the year. Okay. So I said in 2023, the technology of the year was AI. In 24, I said it was GLP-1 AI.

And I pick stocks every year. I picked, I forget what I picked over the last few years, but I've gotten, my big tech stock pick for 24 was Reddit. And in 25, my quote unquote big trend or big stock pick is really boring. And that is, I think the rivers are about to reverse in terms of capital flows and the unprecedented capital flows into the US over the last 15 years. I think those rivers are about to reverse.

And we're going to see a massive outflow of capital. And it's already happened. I started selling down my U.S. stocks in Q4 of last year. It's been my big theme for 25. Just regression of the mean is an incredibly powerful force. And we have been on a unprecedented tear for about 14, 15 years. Economic cycle is usually about eight years. We've been on a tear for a good 14, 15 years.

And I've been, my big investment or big theme, if you will, is that you're going to see a massive reallocation of capital out of the U.S. into non-U.S. markets. And the market I like the most is Europe, because if you ask anyone about Europe, they just roll their eyes and go, no, they're fucked. It's a museum. It's overregulated. That's when you invest, is when something's been left for dead. There are really good companies in Europe trading at single-digit PEs.

And then in the US you have Apple, which is not growing. Apple grew 1% last year and it's at a PE of 36, I think, or 34. So that just, it's trading like a growth stock and it's not, it's a mature stock. So my big kind of theme is not, I don't know a technology. My technology that I really like was nuclear and then I did more research on it and people are like, nuclear is going to take five to 10 years to come online. It's more expensive.

LNG, it's more liquid natural gas. And then I realized it was over my head talking about energy. So my kind of, my thing here has been basically that you're about to see an enormous transition, massive multiple contraction in the U.S. where we go from 26 to the high teens, maybe even lower.

and you're going to see other markets outperform the US. That's my big theme and that's how I'm reallocating my capital. In terms of public stocks, I'm going to be almost entirely out of the US market within three or four months. Does that mean you'd be owning... I know you talked about a lot of your public holdings being indexed. Does that mean you'd own a global market fund or you'd be owning a European index? What does that mean?

No, because it's sort of like what you were saying, that I can't resist picking individual stocks. I'm an investor, and this is a very risky one. I invested in a company called Vertical Aerospace, which is a VTOL company, Vertical Takeoff and Landing. And my thesis is that generally you're going to have multiple expansion in the UK or in Europe. I think the last mile of transportation is, I'm fascinated with aviation. I think the last mile is the problem to be solved. Helicopters are this dirty, dangerous technology that just shouldn't be around anymore.

And these VTOLs, basically, I don't know if you've seen these things. They look like drones and they have, you know, vertical, and they're electric. So they're really quiet. One can land in your backyard and you wouldn't know it's there. I think Archer, in America, Archer is one of them. Archer and Joby. So Archer and Joby traded like four to six billion. This one, again, on the ropes, went in with my same friend, did a pipe. It's got like, I think it's two or $300, three or $400 million market cap. And also my thesis is that

My big thesis is I'm trying to get in front of what I think is going to be one of the greatest increases, unexpected increases in CapEx in modern history. And that is essentially the EU has come to the painful conclusion it can no longer count on its crazy rich uncle for military support or for kind of consistency. And so the EU is talking about taking 1%, 1.9% of GDP allocated to defense and increasing that to 3%. So

$19 trillion economy, you're talking about an incremental spend of $200 billion a year on defense spending that no one was expecting even 12 or 24 months ago. So I'm looking, and by the way, defense stocks have already ripped. It might already be too late. The few defense stocks in Europe have already dramatically overperformed. But I think that there's going to be, I think that additional spending is going to be stimulative.

And also there'll be some technology spillover, which I think will help the tech sector and I think inspire sort of an upward spiral in some European stocks. So I'm an investor in this company called Vertical Aerospace. I'm an investor in a fund called Atlanta Partners that finds small and mid-cap special sits in Latin America and Europe because I think big cap, kind of big cap growth has taken all the returns for the last decade. And I don't know how long that's going to last.

So I try and spread it out. Ray Dalio said something that was really powerful, that the key is to try and find 12 positive income streams that are not correlated.

that if you can do that, you're going to do really well. That on a risk-adjusted basis, if you can find 12 different stocks, companies, cash flows that are somewhat uncorrelated, that's the goal. And then you get kind of above market risk-adjusted return. And that's what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to find either funds or individual companies that are somewhat uncorrelated. And the problem is everything now is somewhat correlated because diversification, that basic theme

caught wind or purchased in the 80s. And so every large institutional investor started diversifying like crazy, which means it's impossible to have non-correlated assets now because if an institution is investing in an iron ore manufacturer in Australia and Nova Nordisk, if they get in trouble and need capital, they're going to sell everything.

And so basically we're all kind of interconnected right now. So the recognition of diversification has made it more difficult to diversify. But I'm buying both individual stocks, investing with investing, co-investing with friends and VCs. I'm an investor in two Israeli companies.

Do you have a target rate of return? Are you like, I want to compound at 15%, 20%? Do you have a target and do you actually track it for yourself personally? My target is I just want to be a baller. What does it take to do that? Same. How does one ball? How does one ball, Scott? Does it start with not asking that question? Yeah, that's right. It immediately outs me as not a baller. Yeah. Yeah.

I'm going tonight to some British hotspot or some hotspot in London and the door woman lets me in because I think she thinks I have more money than I have. So I need to catch up to her expectations. Of me. Of me. I need the perception of me to catch up to the reality of the perception. You should ask her, how much money do you think that I have? So I know I need a target. Yeah. I need a goose to chase. It's like when a woman returns my eye contact at a bar, I'm like, she's thinking I'm rich. Anyways.

I don't, I'm not that thoughtful. What I loosely try to think, I'm now at the point where I'm not looking to get rich, I'm looking to not get poor. So I don't think of returns, what I think of, I want to find good investments and good assets.

And I want to make sure that I always, I do a lot of what they did in Sarbanes-Oxley. I do a lot of stress testing on my portfolio. I'm like, okay, what if the NASDAQ got cut in half tomorrow? What would that mean for me? What would happen if there was a real estate crash? My biggest investment, and we haven't talked about this, my hands down, my biggest personal investment theme is that I think income inequality is only going to get worse. And I've been saying this for a long time. I think it's terrible, but I think it's only going to get worse.

I think the money has totally washed over Washington. We now have a president who's opened a meme coin, which is essentially a Swiss banking account where anyone could put money in. Oh, by the way, congrats on the 500K membership you bought to the Trump Friends Club or whatever. Oh, yeah, yeah. The ambassadors, the douchiest douches in douchville. Yeah, for 500K. Yeah.

I'd pay a lot of money not to be in that. Anyways, and by the way, I think those guys- He'd sell you that too. He's a genius, actually. People have been really critical of that. My sense is, write a free assembly, they can do whatever they want. What I think is criminal-

is having a meme coin that Putin could put. Wouldn't Putin be stupid not to call Trump and say, I'll put a billion dollars in here, Polst, and I have these mathematicians, and I'll take the value because price discovery is at the margins. I'll take the value of this thing up to 30 billion. You own 80%. I'm going to make you the wealthiest man in the world. And by the way, in unrelated news, could you stop supporting Ukraine?

Wouldn't he be stupid not to make that call? He's losing half a billion. What's the Trump coin? It's called Trump coin. He has a meme coin. Yeah, what's it at now? What's the market cap of it now? Wasn't it like $5 billion? It went to $20. Now I think it's at $3 or $4. By the way, you want to talk about— This happened the day before the inauguration, yeah?

Okay, hold on. You want to talk about grift? They have flooded the zone with so much crazy shit. You want to talk about grift? They announced the Trump coin the Friday night, the darker Friday night before his inauguration so it would get lost in the news. 30 people made $800 million over the weekend. I'm going to guess, I'm going to go out on a limb here that those people probably got a call maybe from someone close to Trump saying, launching a coin, you should do this.

Then over the course of the next couple of months, I think about 80,000 people lost billions of dollars, i.e. retail investors. Then as the lockup's coming off, he announces a big dinner to hype the stock. Then he decides, oh, you know what? The Division of Justice, the Department of Justice investigating scams in the crypto market, we should close that unit down.

The grift here, if any Republican ever uses the word, you know, Hunter Biden,

It should be like what Hunter Biden has been accused of is a parking ticket compared to the double murder of grift this administration is levying against the American public. But also both could be wrong. Both could be wrong. Like both could be wrong. Like, you know, I cannot stand when people say, well, what about this? It's like that is also bad. You know what I mean? Like we could have two conversations. To your point.

I almost respect, we Democrats are corrupt for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Speaker Amitapalosi trades stocks. That's fucking insane. She's in a meeting with Health and Human Services and they say, oh, we're going to invest more in payment systems using AI. And then she goes out and she buys, this happened, options, call options on Tempest AI. And then when she discloses that she's bought options, the stock surges 30 or 40%.

So Democrats have been corrupt. We're just corrupt for small ball. He's corrupt for billions. And the damage he does in terms of reducing Americans' confidence in the market is bad. But the ability to say, hey, you know, I'm thinking about invading Taiwan. Can you make sure that your attack submarines and your carrier fleets don't show up?

in the Strait of Taiwan. And by the way, we're buying a shit ton of Trump coin and nobody knows. That's grift on a different level. Anyways,

Where I started this rant was I think income inequality is only getting worse. I think there's a small, what I call, emerging cohort of what I call transnational oligarchs. And that is the point, really, 0.1% that has access to influence and deal flow and corruption and gets exponentially richer. And unfortunately, those folks no longer have a vested interest in the health of their host nation because they have their own schools, they have their own rights.

I will always have access to methacestrone. I never get it right. I will always have access to family. I could be living in deepest, reddest Mississippi. If someone in my life needs to terminate a pregnancy, I'd have no problem.

If someone comes after my rights, I can lawyer up like no tomorrow. If they start rounding up Jews in the United States, the same way they're rounding up people with the wrong tattoo, I can peace out to Dubai or Milan. So the transnational oligarchs are losing a vested interest in the success of their host countries and democracy and kind of rule of law because they have their own rule of law. They have their own bill of rights.

And so what I see is a group of people who are becoming so exponentially wealthier than the rest of the population. And I think, OK, that's terrible. I rail against it. I'm trying to work against it. But at the same time, I'm not going to fight City Hall. I'm going to try and make money off of it. And the way I'm making money off of it is the following. They're really wealthy. The 0.01% want to live in one of five places. They want to live in Dubai. How much is 0.15%?

Anyone who's worth more. I think it's like anyone who's worth more than $50 million. Five-zero. Okay. Okay. So, by the way, the number of millionaires in the United States has doubled since 2020. The number of billionaires has gone from 500 to 2,510 years. Yeah. I mean, doesn't something like the top 15% is millionaire? I mean, it's something like where it's not like that.

That is when we started the podcast, so it kind of makes sense. But I'm not even talking about millionaires. I'm talking about people. Let's look at billionaires. Billionaires want to live in one of five places, Dubai, London, Palm Beach, Aspen, or New York. That's pretty much it. A few of them in LA, a few of them in Hong Kong. But my investment strategy is I own really nice homes in four of those five areas.

And my view is in 30 or 50 years, those homes could be worth a lot of money. And they're a great store of value. I can lever up on them with, which I don't do, but you can borrow against them. And also there's a psychic benefit, and that is I want to try and figure out an investment strategy that makes it hard for my boys to avoid me.

And that is when they're in college, they're going to say, well, we can go to Tijuana or we could go to Aspen and hang out with my dad, but we have to have lunch with them. I'm like, well, how fat's the house? It's fat. All right, we'll have lunch with your dad. So, but the biggest assets I have are our residential real estate. And when I'm not living there, I rent them out. But I think income inequality has gone so batshit crazy, not only in the U.S., around the world, but

that you want to find places where these people want to live. If you're a billionaire, you have a home in one of these places, or you're going to. And if you are worth over $100 million, you're going to have a home in one of these places. And they're not making any more beachfront real estate in Palm Beach. Manhattan is constrained. Aspen is almost impossible to develop in. And London is constrained. And I think London is a super city and will always have a certain appeal for the wealthy.

So my biggest asset allocation has been in high-end real estate and what I call these super, super cities, homes of future billionaires.

Whenever you are in a bad mood, feel free to come on and just rant. I enjoy this. Don't humor me, bitch. If you find a new religion that you're into, whatever it is. Same one, atheism. Same one. How are you guys? I'm so good at talking about me. How are you guys? I think we both hit a point where we kind of had to make a decision on

how much of our future decisions are gonna be dictated by money. Because, you know, 120% of my decisions between the age of maybe 20 and 32 were dictated by like, how do I be more successful? - Yeah. - And then I sort of realized like, great, I see two groups of people in life, you know, from here,

Some people who just continue to make all their decisions based on money, even though they've already earned the last dollar they'll ever spend. And that doesn't seem like that doesn't make any sense, but I totally get it because they found a game and they're good at the game. The game is fun and you get rewarded for that game with a clear, tangible, visible metric. And then there's a smaller group of people who, uh,

went back and thought of a new game they wanted to play. And they went back to the bottom of the mountain. And philosophically, that's my real answer to your question. Like, yeah, I got good stuff going on with my kids and their business and all that. But like philosophically, that's where I'm at is picking what game I want to play for the next seven to 10 years because I don't think it should be the same game I just played for the last 15. Like, what was the point of winning the last 15 if I'm just going to play the same levels again and just keep doing that even though incrementally it does nothing?

That's great self-awareness. I think your decision to be very focused on economic security in your 20s and 30s is absolutely the right decision because it'll provide more balance as you get older and more flexibility. They say money is ink in your pen. It can write new chapters and make certain chapters burn brighter, but it's not your story. But fill up that pen while you have the health, the strength, the lack of dogs and kids. And also young kids are, I don't know, I think young kids are overrated. What I would say is

I'm contradicting myself. Another piece of advice, take so many pictures. Take so many pictures because, you know, the reason you will get so sentimental and be so appreciative of these pictures because we're a species that values scarcity. We gorge because there's been an absence of fatty, sugary food. We...

We're, you know, we want to play, we want to gamble because there was an absence of free play on the Savannah. We engage in porn because there's an absence of mating opportunities. Only 40% of men have reproduced throughout history, whereas 80% of women have. And scarcity makes us miss things and desire it. There's nothing more scarce than your kids because literally your kid, I mean, it's like that saying, you never know the last time you're going to pick up your kids. And my kid now,

I mean, literally my little boy, you know, who I just went on a college tour with, it was yesterday that he was coming into my room, crawling into bed with me and saying, let's make a plan. And he used to just go, you know, just used to go apeshit crazy. Like, so excited when the new, you know, the new episode of Mandalorian came on and like run around the house or whatever.

you know, jump into the pool after my dog. And those moments, you're going to be so sentimental. And the thing that kind of fills that hole of that sadness is I do those Apple memories every day. And you just, you cannot take enough pictures. And it sounds like you're more soulful than I was at your age, but trying to take time with your partner just to stop

and kind of bask in those moments because I think it was Gloria Vanderbilt said the happiest she ever was was when she had young kids at home. And I do believe looking back on it, that will be the moment I say that was the happiest I've ever been. So I think you're thinking about it. Why did you say young kids are overrated? I think babies are hard.

I think babies, I should have said, I think babies are tough. Yeah. I think kind of zero to three. Dads pretend to like it. I think most dads don't. Yeah. I openly dislike zero to 18 months. And then after that, I'm good. That's tough. That's probably better. After that, I love it. And then three to five is, you know, it starts getting fun. And then like five to 15 is...

is just the golden decade. I'm shocked at how soft it's made me. Like, I cry pretty easily, like, thinking about certain things with my children. Oh, that's nice.

Dude, I watched this movie Wonder. Have you seen this movie Wonder? Oh, gosh. Dude, have a main. Wonder will destroy you. That's a wonderful movie. If you just had a kid, Wonder will destroy you. Just watch an episode of Modern Family. I cry every other episode of Modern Family. Like it's crazy. Or I'll like look at, I get when I get the thing on my phone or like one year ago today and I'm looking, my daughter's 18 months now and I'm like, oh,

"Oh my God, I get my notification." I'm like, "Oh wow, she's grown a lot." - I actually have a prediction on this. You know how meditation went from fringe to in vogue and then cold plunging? We do all these things to change our state, change the way we feel. And the reality is you're not cold plunging because you think it's gonna add a year to your life when you're 89 years old. It's not a longevity thing. It's a feeling thing and it's a brag on social media thing.

And so I think that there's going to be another one of these. It's a technique that I actually learned at a Tony Robbins event. Tony said that he does this thing with his wife once a month. That's literally the weakest flex in the world. I learned this at a Tony Robbins event. You should keep that to yourself. What's he going to say? I learned this. I learned this. I learned this from my friend Anthony. I learned this.

They learned it on a silent retreat or something. He does it as a regular practice. So they basically, him and his wife, they sit down, they basically put like the last, uh, they, they just like put the camera roll on the TV and he calls it like emotional flooding. Basically. It's like, you basically just like kind of wash yourself in these, like the best memories, the, the sort of the best photos, the best videos. And it,

It keeps you like, I don't know. It keeps you bonded. It keeps you happy. It's like such a simple thing. It's like way easier than meditation. And I feel way better afterwards. And it's just been a very like healthy, especially with me and my wife, we've got three kids under five. It's like really easy for us to not like, we can go five days without even talking. Like, or the only talking we have is functional. Like, you know, you have three under five. Yeah.

Oh, you're in Vietnam right now. That's hand-to-hand combat. Yeah, so this is what's keeping us alive. I'm sure the guys in the bunkers had things that they did to feel good, too. This is what I do. Oh, you're just calling her like your roommate? My roommate and I got to go handle these kids? But just to end on a sour note, because I'm glass half empty. Stay on brand. Yeah, you're right. We almost outed you as a happy, good dude. What the three of us are experiencing...

is not a foregone conclusion for the majority of young people. I think in America today, it's like the future. Prosperity is here, it's just not evenly distributed. I think the majority of young people, it's not within their reach right now to think about finding a mate and having children. And when you think about it, it really is...

I think it's the great tragedy of America that despite the NASDAQ going up, despite the incredible prosperity, despite our ability to capture these amazing technologies and create unbelievable shareholder growth, 60% of 30-year-olds used to have a child in their household 40 years ago. Now it's 27%. Well, you said some crazy stats with Logan. Logan's a good friend of mine. I love Logan. And you said something, was it something, I don't exactly remember. It was like, if you're above 35 and you're a man and you

aren't in a relationship, the likelihood that you're going to have children is only 20% or it was like some phenomenal stats where it was just like, uh, basically, uh,

The men who are having sex who are single now are the ones who are getting all of the sex and the men who aren't In their 20s like the they have no hope something ridiculous like that's a story Well, I think the stat you're referring to there's a couple of the couple scary stats one if a man hasn't Cohabitated or been married by the time he's 30. There's a one in three chance He's gonna have a substance abuse problem loneliness really does take a bigger toll on men than it does on women women will transition a lot of that and

romantic energy into friendships and into professional work, whereas men don't. They rechannel that energy into a lot of negative things. And the scariest stat I've seen is that in America, 51% of men 18 to 24 have never asked a woman out in person.

So if you're a dude listening to this podcast and you think, I want to level up in terms of my success romantically, if you have ever asked a woman out, I'm not saying you have to be successful. She might've said no, and that's fine. But if you have ever asked a woman out in person, you're already in the top half of young men in terms of risk aggressiveness and your willingness to try and express romantic interest while making someone feel safe. Young men are basically sequestering from society, or a lot of them are, unfortunately,

And the economic, the fact that old people have figured out a way to vote themselves more money, the fact that corruption has now gone on full tilt and a smaller number of people are aggregating all the spoils means that a lot of young people just no longer really have the viable option to A, find a mate, and B, should they find a mate, have the economic viability to have a kid and experience what the three of us are experiencing. I think that in my view, that the unifying theory of everything, I think a lot about politics is,

Should be a series of programs that help anyone under the age of 41 meet people. More third places. They need their version of the game. When Sean and I were 14, the game, the book, came out. And like every 14-year-old read this book called The Game. It was about pickup artists. And it took a whole bunch of internet nerds like us. Have you ever read this book? The Game? I know it, but I haven't read it. Neil Strauss.

You would appreciate it just from a writing perspective. It was awesome. It was fantastic. That's why I read it, to be clear, just for the pros. My girlfriend in high school, we were going to colleges in two different states, and her parting gift to me was she gave me the book The Game, which was the greatest gift and the greatest insult I'd ever received in my life up to that point. It was amazing. Yeah, I imagine a lot of young men listen to this podcast. Your goal is to get to know. What do I mean by that? Send your LinkedIn profile or emails to jobs you're not qualified for.

Find friends you're interested in hanging out with and try and hang out with them. Put yourself in the agency of strangers and absolutely develop some game, a plan such that you're confident enough to go up to strange people, same sex, other sex, and express romantic interest while making them feel safe. And the only way you get to great yeses is through a shit ton of no's. So start working on the no's. And by the way, if you don't know what to say, the little Dickie pickup line. He just goes up to a woman and he says, excuse me.

What's your availability right now as far as being hit on? The most polite pickup line that'll make her laugh. I got a better one. I got a better one. You approach him with a camera.

And you say, will you take a picture of me? Everyone always says yes. If you say, will you take a picture of me? Like you're a tourist or something, you take a picture of me. And they go, okay, now can you flip the camera around and take one of both of us? And she'll go, well, why? And you say, because someday I'm going to show it to our kids. Scott Galloway, thank you very much, man. You're the best. Thank you, guys. Congrats on everything. I feel like I can rule the world and be what I want to.

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