The Number One Reason This Generation Is Struggling: Scott Galloway

Scott Galloway, or ‘Prof G’ to his fans, is one of the most influential business thought leaders in the world. Host of The Prof G Show, one of the most popular business podcasts in America, he brings his wisdom to his millions of followers and fans who hang on his every word. Scott is unique for his philosophy that people shouldn’t follow their dreams, but instead find something they’re good at, and improve and hone it to a point where they’re recognised for their talent. The author of four New York Times bestselling books, Scott’s expertise ranges broadly, and this conversation does, too. Scott goes over the difference between million dollar and billion dollar businesses, how he sees business leadership, and why people overrate the importance of founders. Follow Scott: Instagram - https://bit.ly/3NdunjW Twitter - https://bit.ly/3W9Y4Gn Scotts book: https://amzn.to/3FkpH9F Follow me: https://beacons.ai/diaryofaceo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Scott Galloway?

  If you could do something that would make you less depressed to be successful, wouldn't you want to take that drug every day? You've got to tell me what it is. So it is...

• 0:08Speaker 01

  Scott Galloway. He's a public speaker and author, a marketing professor at NYU. He's a business world rock star. I'm not done yet.

• 0:16Scott Galloway?

  The number of kids who see their friends every day has been cut in half in the last 10 years. The knock-on effect here is that we're producing too many of what is the most dangerous person in the world, and that is a young, broken, alone man.

• 0:30Scott Galloway?

  They get this illusion that they have worth when they say angry misogynistic content on social media. They become just really shitty citizens.

• 0:37Speaker 02

  Andrew Tate, the self-described misogynist.

• 0:39Steven Bartlett?

  If a woman is going out with a man, she belongs to that man. Is Andrew Tate's message a symptom of what you've described?

• 0:45Scott Galloway?

  100%. They're out of fucking control.

• 0:48Steven Bartlett?

  How would we go about solving this problem?

• 0:49Scott Galloway?

  So, life gets very hard, very fast, 25 to 45. And generally speaking, these are the least happy years. And then something wonderful happens. You find joy in the mundane as you get older, and you get happier. So I think it's helpful just to know that. When you say something stupid at a party, when you say something unkind and you're just beating yourself up, you need to forgive yourself and you need to realize what feels important in the moment isn't that important. Happiness waits for you.

• 1:18Steven Bartlett?

  What are you still working on?

• 1:19Scott Galloway?

  I'm trying to slow time down. Time is falling off a cliff for me.

• 1:23Steven Bartlett?

  But how does one practically slow time down so that 30 years doesn't fly past?

• 1:27Scott Galloway?

  I find that you can slow time down by...

• 1:31Steven Bartlett?

  Without further ado, I'm Stephen Butler, and this is the Diary of a CEO. I hope nobody's listening, but if you are, then please keep this to yourself.

• 1:47Steven Bartlett?

  Scott, give me your context. What is the necessary context that I'd have to understand about you and your earliest years to make sense of the person that you went on to be in your life?

• 2:02Scott Galloway?

  Wow, that's a thoughtful question. Raised by a single immigrant mother who lived and died as a secretary. A lot of my life, you know, I think the most important thing in anyone's life is to have someone who's rationally passionate about your well-being, and I had that. And the second thing is I was born in California in the 60s, a white heterosexual male, which was like hitting the lottery. I got access to amazing free education. I went to UCLA and Berkeley for graduate and undergraduate degrees, total tuition $7,000. And not only was it accessible financially, it was accessible, period. The admissions

• 2:40Scott Galloway?

  rate at UCLA when I applied was 76%. It's now 6%. And I mention my sexuality because my freshman roommate in college was born a white homosexual male and was dead of AIDS at the age of 33. So, you know, a lot of my success, whether it was free education, coming of age during the internet age, which was incredible wind in your economic sails, you know, a lot of my success is not my fault. So the two things that I try and remember that define my start, and it was an amazing start, were one, you know, someone who was rationally passionate about my well-being and being born in America and just being exceptionally fortunate.

• 3:23Steven Bartlett?

  You mentioned your mother there. What about your father?

• 3:26Scott Galloway?

  My dad, you know, not a bad man. He left us, for lack of a better term, when I was eight. You know, it was the 70s. He started his third marriage while he was still married to my mom. Neither of my parents are very sophisticated. They were both pulled out of school at the age of 13. My dad was a handsome Scott living in LA, which means he not only thought with his dick, he could listen to it. And so he, you know, just really enjoyed himself, for lack of a better term, which didn't foot well to, you know, a family life. So he wasn't very involved in my life. Growing up, but I feel compelled to say now that he's ninety two.

• 4:10Scott Galloway?

  Every person's obligation from a species level is to be a better father or mother than their father or mother was to them. And he was definitely that. He was, he grew up in terrible circumstances. And he always tried to do the right thing, but it was, you know, it was me and my mom.

• 4:26Steven Bartlett?

  Was it a happy childhood in your view?

• 4:28Scott Galloway?

  It was entirely, you were talking a little bit about your childhood. It was entirely unremarkable. I feel like on a scale of one to a hundred, hundred being the best childhood in the world, one being the worst. In America, at least, I was like a fifty. It wasn't bad. You know, we didn't have any, we didn't have, we were upper, lower middle class, but it wasn't a sob story. In America in the seventies, you could make, you could survive on a secretary's salary. We took vacations. I didn't go to good schools, but they were bad schools. I had friends, but not a lot of friends. You know, my high school reunion was recently, no one would remember me. My, my childhood was remarkably unremarkable. It wasn't bad. It's not a sob story, but it wasn't what I would call great with a lot of support and a lot of accoutrements.

• 5:13Scott Galloway?

  But again, the context of it is being at the median in California in the seventies was like hitting the lottery. It was the highest median in the world.

• 5:24Steven Bartlett?

  What was your relationship like with money? Cause I, I remember reading that that was quite, your relationship with money and your, your family's relationship with money was quite formative.

• 5:32Scott Galloway?

  Uh, money very early had a big impact on me because, you know, people say, oh, at the time, having a divorced mom felt like a little bit of a, not a scarlet letter, but you were the kid who lived with his mother. But the thing that was harder was we didn't have any money. I mean, we weren't poor, but you know, you apply to college and if you didn't get into UCLA, which I didn't get in, there were no options. We didn't have the confidence or the contacts or the money to apply for me to apply to college outside of school. It was stressful and, but it was also in some ways very motivating. My mom got sick when I was a young adult and I, me being the only child and some of those, you know, instincts that a son feels for his mother take over.

• 6:17Scott Galloway?

  And when my mom got sick, I decided, all right, I, I remember coming home one weekend. She was very ill. And I remember thinking, kind of like, I'm not doing my job as a man because I don't have the money to take care of her. And that was really emasculating. And that's when I kind of got my shit together. I remember the moment, it was when I was in graduate school, I was 26. And look, I decided very early, and people, I think people who have achieved some level of wealth, aren't entirely forthcoming or honest. I think about money a lot. I was very focused on it. I decided very early that I was going to have economic security. I did nothing but pretty much work for 20 years. I don't remember much else but work. It cost me my hair, it cost me my first marriage, and was worth it.

• 6:59Steven Bartlett?

  Is there a risk in that, that when we become so orientated by money?

• 7:03Scott Galloway?

  Yep.

• 7:04Steven Bartlett?

  We, I've had this conversation with a few guests about, are we really driven or are we being dragged? And how do we make sure we're not being dragged? So we can be intentional about living lives in line with our values?

• 7:18Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, I'm not proposing this is what the world should be, I'm proposing what it is in a capitalist society. And that is, I think, America, I just moved here, so I don't know if society is different here. I have noticed here that people ask you where you're from. In America, they ask you what you do. But America becomes more like itself every day. And it is a kind, generous place if you have money. It's a rapacious, violent place if you don't have money. And I figured that out very, very soon. The way I saw it was that poor people have an entirely different experience with the US healthcare system than rich people. I just saw it as, if I want to have a life of opportunity, of prosperity, selection set of mates, even love, to be wealthy in America is to be loved.

• 8:01Scott Galloway?

  People find you interesting, they want to know you, you have a broader selection set of mates. It is, the idolatry of the dollar and the impact that wealth has on your life in America is unfortunate and 100% true, and it gets more true every day. And one of the things I coach young people around is you just have to figure out a way to become economically viable. I'm not saying you need to do what I did and work all the time and be very kind of have a monocular focus on money, which I did. I think there's a lot of people who decide they're not gonna live to work, they're gonna work to live. And they move to a lower cost region, they live within their means and they have really good lives. I think that's a nice way to live your life. The majority of young people I'm around, by virtue of the fact I teach at a business

• 8:46Scott Galloway?

  school, expect to not only be in the top 10%, they expect to be in the top 1% economically. And so what I encourage young people to do is have a sober conversation. Where do you expect to be economically? And the majority of young people you talk to expect to be in the top 1%. And I don't know anyone who's gotten there who didn't inherit money, who didn't sacrifice a lot. And what I tell young people is you can't have it all, you just can't have it all at once. And I think in this competitive environment, to be great in anything, you not only need talent, you not only need luck, you just need a tremendous amount of grit and a tremendous commitment. There are some people who are so talented that they can have balance in their lives

• 9:29Scott Galloway?

  at a young age and get economic security. I think you should assume you're not one of those people. And assume that, like most of us who have achieved some level of economic security, it's required a significant trade-off. It came at a cost. It came at a cost of relationships. It came at a cost of stress. I mean, it takes a toll. But the reason I have balance in my life right now, I have a lot of balance in my life right now, is because I didn't have very much when I was your age, when I was young. I mean, you're an entrepreneur. It's hard to phone it in as an entrepreneur. It just requires a level of... People think we're just so, we're extraordinarily talented, that we're just blessed with some special skill. I would argue that you have more of a risk appetite, you're willing to endure public

• 10:12Scott Galloway?

  failure, because there's no blaming anyone else when your business, you know, crashes. It's very public failure. And also, more than anything, you have a natural instinct to be thinking about the business all the time and working at it most of the time. That's, you know, there's a relationship between intelligence and success, but it tops out at about 110, 120 IQ. It's better to be smart, you're more likely to be successful if you're smart, but the difference between being smart and being genius has no correlation between success. That's where grit and perseverance and resilience take over.

• 10:47Steven Bartlett?

  I want to continue that thread, but one of the things you said at the start of this conversation was about your mother's, she got sick.

• 10:55Scott Galloway?

  Mm-hmm.

• 10:56Steven Bartlett?

  I read that she, you remember the day when you realized that she was depressed.

• 10:59Scott Galloway?

  Yep.

• 11:00Steven Bartlett?

  How did that shape your views on happiness and fulfillment and depression and how we, how we ultimately end up in a situation where we're suffering with depression? Was that at all, did that influence your view on happiness, watching your mother be, become depressed?

• 11:16Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, my mom was sincerely depress, severely depressed, but I remember, and that's one of the wonderful things about our liberal arts education, I took psychology and they started talking about clinical depression, what it meant, and I realized that's what my mom was suffering from. And depression is sort of the cancer of our generation in that as it used to be closeted, now people are openly talking about it, and it's really helpful because I wish I'd known what my mom was going through earlier. Because you immediately, you know, we're a narcissistic species, you immediately think it's something you've done, it's not about you usually, it's about them. And also, life isn't about what happens to you, it's about how you respond to what happens to you. And I think it's very helpful when you recognize depression and understand it and recognize

• 11:59Scott Galloway?

  in other people, because what you then realize is that when you're feeling really down, a lot of times, it's not your fault. You may have substantial reason to be depressed, but you may not. A lot of it is about your chemistry that day. And also to recognize that this too shall pass, that nothing, a saying that's been really important to me, and it's one of the few sayings that's always kind of held its water for me, is nothing is ever as good or as bad as it seems. When you feel like you're killing it, when you feel like you're on top of the world, that's absolutely the time to bring in your horns and be humble and grateful and realize a lot of your success isn't your fault. You just got lucky. And at the same time, when you're upset, when you're angry at yourself, when you're depressed, when you feel like everything's just black, it's not. That's that's temporary and you it's comforting to know that that will pass.

• 12:44Scott Galloway?

  Understanding what my mom was going through was external, that it wasn't because things are so bad for us or so bad for her, that this was a chemical thing, this was like catching a cold. That was really liberating and helpful, not only to manage the situation in our household, but to recognize when I was down and also to recognize that I was probably going to be more prone or vulnerable to that type of depression. But just being aware of these things, you know, you're a young man. When I was a kid, we didn't talk about depression. We used to call it a nervous breakdown and it was a sign of weakness and it only happened to women. Right? They were the weaker gender and they had something called a nervous breakdown. That was what mental health, that's what depression was called back then.

• 13:28Scott Galloway?

  And then slowly but surely, people started to acknowledge that it was a thing, that it was no different than any other type of illness, that it was treatable and that it wasn't a sign of shame. So it was really helpful for me. It was it was, you know, liberating to kind of understand it and realize that it wasn't totally a function of our situation or an indication of how good or bad things were at the time.

• 13:54Steven Bartlett?

  One of the things you talk about in your new book, Adrift, is this decay of community in our lives.

• 14:00Scott Galloway?

  Yeah.

• 14:01Steven Bartlett?

  And community seems like such a human thing.

• 14:03Scott Galloway?

  Yeah.

• 14:04Steven Bartlett?

  So I, when I read that, I thought, maybe that's in part, part of the, part of the cause or factor of why we're seeing a lot of unhappiness, depression and these things. What's your, what's your take on that?

• 14:17Scott Galloway?

  Hundred percent. Do you have dogs? I know you have kids.

• 14:20Steven Bartlett?

  I do have a dog upstairs.

• 14:21Scott Galloway?

  So look, dogs just want to be around other beings and mammals are social, we're very social. We, you know, from a young age, we suckle, we're. We just wanna, my dogs lie on top of each other. I mean, we're meant to be around each other. And whether it's in the US, enrollment in Boy and Girl Scouts is off by like forty percent. Church attendance is way down. The percentage of people who speak to their neighbors is off like forty percent. And you just think about COVID, we don't go to the mall, we don't go to the movie theaters, right? We're becoming more and more segregated by income class. The number of kids who see their friends every day has been cut in half in the last ten years. So we're just not touching, smelling, and feeling each other nearly as much.

• 15:06Scott Galloway?

  And I think that's directly correlated to happiness. My youngest really struggled with COVID. And we always said, well, it's because he's not in school, because the schools were closed for a while. And I thought, more than school, what my kid needs is other kids. And that is, you know, you need guardrails, you need people around you. I think of those Japanese soldiers who retreated into the hills of the Philippines with orders to not give up the island. You know, when the Japanese withdrew from the Philippine Islands in the South Pacific, they left behind some of these soldiers. Some of them were there for twenty or thirty years, and they refused to give up their commission

• 15:48Scott Galloway?

  until they would have to find the commanding officer, take them to the island, and tell them, come down, the war's been over for twenty-five years. These individuals accomplished nothing. They didn't grow spiritually, physically, they didn't learn anything. They had nothing to share with anyone after their twenty-five years. So being alone is one of the worst things on an extended basis that can happen to a human. And every day, one of the worst things that can happen to a human is happening more and more to all of us in Western society. And it's especially prevalent among kids. The lack of socialization, and then this kind of hyper-socialization that takes place on their phone, which is really brutal and has huge externalities, is, I think, one of

• 16:31Scott Galloway?

  the biggest causes for the massive uptick in depression among young people. So, again, I like to coach younger people. I'm like, put yourself in a position where you have to be around other people every day, building something in the agency of something else. Whether it's a job, whether it's a nonprofit, whether it's church, whether it's a sports league, be in the agency of others, building something bigger than all of you. It's a great way to make friends, mentors. It's a great way to learn how to read the room. I joined a fraternity when I went to UCLA when I was 17. And people make a cartoon of fraternity. Like, we're all these terrible people. It was the best thing I could have done. I had no male role models until the age of 17. My dad wasn't around. I didn't have many friends.

• 17:16Scott Galloway?

  So being in a place that shrunk a 30,000-person campus down to a smaller thing, I wouldn't have graduated. And it was hard for me. These, my quote-unquote fraternity brothers, gave me a hard time. But it was really good for me. You know, you, you, you, you get in better shape. I, I remember, I remember my roommates telling me to stop smoking so much pot and go to class more. I mean, you have people watching you 24 by 7. I needed that socialization. So I think one of the worst things that can happen to a young adult is for them to be isolated. And we're increasingly isolated.

• 17:50Steven Bartlett?

  Are you optimistic about that, that changing? Because the direction of travel is in one, is in one direction. And then when you hear things about metaverses.

• 17:57Scott Galloway?

  Yeah. I'm not. I think we have this nihilistic, I think technology is nihilistic. I think the most successful person in the world, at least monetarily, wants to figure out a way to inhabit another planet rather than focus his genius and his resources on making this planet more habitable. And I find that nihilistic. And people, I, I just find it strange that the most talented, wealthiest people in the world want to get us off the planet. So, and then you think about social media, just the trends among young people. There's an uptick in travel, but that's pent-up demand by a class of people who have the money to travel. Our socialization appears to have taken a dramatic step change, structural step change down. And I even see to my kids, they are thinking about getting home to their phones.

• 18:42Scott Galloway?

  And they're social on their phones, but it's not a replacement for, for person-to-person contact. You know, there's some good things to it. Teen drunk driving accidents are down. Teen pregnancy is way down. But the number of kids socializing is way off. I find it, I think it's a, I think it's a terrible thing and I don't see, there'll be some uptick because COVID's over, but it feels like there's been a structural step change down because people now want the DOPA they get, trading on Robin Hood, watching porn, watching Netflix, getting some sort of socialization or need for affirmation by the number of likes they get on Twitter, rather than leaving their house to get that same type of DOPA hit. The number of people

• 19:26Scott Galloway?

  playing in organized sports is way down. So I'm not, I think it's, I think it's a real problem and I don't see it unless there's, unless there's recognition of it and external investment, whether it's youth clubs, whether it's after school programs, whether it's some sort of conscription or national service, which I'm a big fan of. I don't see structured means for people, young people to serve in the agency of something bigger than themselves.

• 19:53Steven Bartlett?

  Do you think there's a decline, decline in grit amongst young people, that this Gen Z generation in the, in the Western world, when you think about your kids and the, and the grit they'll have, you talked about how important grit is to achieving economic viability. I was talking to Simon Sinek about this a couple of weeks ago on this podcast, about whether Gen Z are less resilient and hardworking than generations that have come before them because of the influences. I remember, I opened up TikTok the other day and it's like, it's showing, I don't know whether this was just the TikTok I saw. I remember one going viral on Twitter a couple of weeks ago from San Francisco, showing the day in the life of a Gen Z working in, in tech and it's like, wake up, go get the frappuccino latte, whatever.

• 20:34Scott Galloway?

  Take the dog for a walk.

• 20:34Steven Bartlett?

  Take the dog for a walk, pottery class.

• 20:38Scott Galloway?

  I love that.

• 20:39Steven Bartlett?

  Five minutes on the laptop, pottery classes.

• 20:43Scott Galloway?

  Yoga. I worry about this a lot with my kids because generally speaking, what happens is the children.

• 20:52Scott Galloway?

  Of, I always say if I had what my kids have, I wouldn't have what I have. Because I wasn't that motivated. If I'd grown up in a household, I'm growing, my kids are growing up now. The only two things I know I would have had in my life as a young man are a Range Rover and a cocaine habit. I just wasn't, an absence of money really motivated me. And my kids don't have that. My kids have access to everything they need. And so trying to figure out a way to instill grit in your kids, whether it's chores or some level of discipline, it's my, I think it's my biggest challenges are our biggest challenges, parents. But in terms of the, I work with, and granted it's selection bias, I work, the kids I work

• 21:34Scott Galloway?

  with, I can't get over how extraordinarily talented they are. So the meme of quiet quitting, and again, it may be proximity bias because of the kids I draw or I know in my firm, but I find that every year, and I teach between three and 500 kids a year at NYU, every year I find that the kids, the young adults are more talented and harder working and more socially conscious. Sure, they're a little expectant, some of it I roll my eyes. You know, occasionally I'll say someone say, you know, I need to leave and go do Pilates class and I kind of laugh, like I can't even imagine saying that to my boss when I started out. But in general, I find they're just remarkable.

• 22:17Scott Galloway?

  And again, it might be because of the kids I've been able to attract, but I don't buy this notion that they're somehow entitled. I don't, I haven't seen that.

• 22:25Steven Bartlett?

  When you're, when you're teaching these young people about and preparing them mentally and with skills for the world that's to come. What is a key indicator that that young person will become a successful adult, professional, entrepreneur, business owner?

• 22:39Scott Galloway?

  Yeah. I can't speak to entrepreneur. We're very data driven. So I ran, I started around a company called L2, which was a business intelligence firm. We grew it to about 120 people and then we sold it. And we were very data driven and we used to, you know, evaluate everybody every year. And then we would try and look for correlations. And while it's dangerous to do and no one wrote it down, the correlations we found that were the best predictors of success at our firm were a few things. One, they went to a great school, which you don't like to say, but most of our kids who are really, really strong had gone to what you would consider elite universities. Two, they were athletes. We found that a background in sports, especially individual sports, whether it was gymnastics

• 23:22Scott Galloway?

  or diving, that these people just brought a certain level of discipline and grit that some of the others didn't have. And the third is female. They, because we had such a young firm, a disproportionate amount of our really successful people were women. And there's a lot of studies showing now that women just mature at an earlier age. The net of it for us was, and you were scared to write it down, and I've sold the firm so I can say it now, if a woman from the Yale gymnastics team showed up, she was an automatic hire. And I don't think that's anything unusual, that groundbreaking.

• 23:59Scott Galloway?

  You know, I graduated from UCLA with a 2.27 GPA. I don't know if you have grades, but basically I barely graduated. And I got a job at Morgan Stanley right out of UCLA, which was considered a pretty prestigious firm, and it's because the guy who ran the department had rode crew. And I was an ordersman at UCLA, and he said, anyone who rode crew gets an automatic hire because you're willing to kill yourself. You can push yourself harder than anyone.

• 24:22Scott Galloway?

  So a lot of these firms recognize that sports are a forward-looking indicator, but some of the other indicators you can't control. You know, getting into an elite university now is a function of being the son or daughter of someone rich or being freakishly remarkable, kind of two cohorts. And then obviously you can't control your sex. But I have several women in their early twenties working for me who could be the junior senator, could be the next ambassador to France. And, you know, a lot of the young men have a lot of potential, but you can just see they just don't mature as fast.

• 24:55Steven Bartlett?

  At NYU, what else are you teaching these kids? I call them kids, they're my age, but.

• 25:01Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, I, well, I mean, it's mostly principles of brand strategy and digital marketing. But I have a course, I have a session that the most popular session is on, I call it the algebra of happiness, and I just go through sort of basic best practices for success. And we've talked about some of them, realizing balance, I think, is a myth. I think the most important decision you'll make in your twenties and thirties, you know, I serve at a class, what's the most important decision you'll make? And they usually say the industry you'll go into, where you decide to live. The most important decision you'll make is who you decide to partner with, specifically have kids, because you're in that person's life for 20 years. And I have a lot of friends who are successful in most exterior metrics, but don't have a real partner in their spouse.

• 25:43Scott Galloway?

  And they have what I would call a life full of stress and disappointment on a regular basis. Whereas I have friends who, on an external basis, may not look as successful, but they have a real partner and everything just burns brighter for them. So the most important decision you'll make is, is who you're fortunate or not fortunate enough to partner with. And so what I suggest is that they be as aggressive as possible about creating as many opportunities for serendipity and contact with people. That your, your ability to punch above your weight class and find someone of great character that you're attracted to, that you fit with, is a function of liquidity, and that is always accept invitations to dinner parties. I think young men should be more aggressive.

• 26:27Scott Galloway?

  I think young men have been told in this environment that they should be very careful about who they approach and express interest in. And I think there is a huge difference between expressing interest in a thoughtful way and harassing someone. And if you don't know the difference, you've got much bigger problems. But I encourage young men to, as general cognitive or behavioral therapy, to force themselves, when they're in a line of coffee, to talk to some of the guy or gal in front of them and behind them. Because if you're interested in someone, there's nothing wrong with asking them out to coffee. There's nothing wrong with expressing interest. And I see a lot of young men are not creating those types of opportunities to meet people and eventually find good friends, find good mentors, and most importantly, find a good mate.

• 27:10Scott Galloway?

  And so unfortunately, marriage and relationships are becoming another luxury item. Marriage and pairing off with a mate is plummeting among people. It's correlated to your wealth. Because middle income and poor people, especially men, are no longer, because of online dating, are no longer seen as viable mates. And they also don't have as many opportunities to meet people in person where there's things like smell and vibe and humor that are some of the magic and mystery of why we're attracted to each other. But what I tell them is create as many opportunities as possible to establish relationships. So it's give up balance, but if and when you can, invest all of your remaining energy

• 27:53Scott Galloway?

  in having as many, you know, random contacts with people as possible. And also be aggressive. Talk to people. Introduce yourself. If you're interested in someone, if you want to establish a friendship, if you're interested in someone romantically, express that interest. If they're not interested in you, both of you are going to be fine. You can handle the rejection or the small rejection. They can handle someone expressing interest. And I think in our age, we've, in a weird way, implicitly told young people, especially men, they're not supposed to express that interest. What do you make of dating apps? Well, I think my advice to young people would be to do it all. You know, it's how people meet.

• 28:34Scott Galloway?

  It used to be how people mated, if you will, is that it used to be a third work, a third friends, and a third school. Now it's well above 50% online. So the majority of relationships are beginning online for people your age. And it's very efficient. But what happens when technology comes into any sector is it consolidates it. It becomes a winner-take-most market. So whether it's e-commerce, social media, search engines, once technology comes into it, you have one company that owns 50% of all online retail, 2/3 of all social, and 93% of search. So technology has come into mating with dating apps. And it's created a winner take all or winner take most dynamic, which is somewhat unhealthy.

• 29:19Scott Galloway?

  And it plays out like something like this. Women are interested in men based on three criteria. The first is their ability to signal resources. The second is intelligence and the third is kindness. It doesn't matter how rich or how smart you are. If you're an asshole or you're not kind, people eventually don't want you as a mate. And unfortunately, online, it's very difficult to signal two and three. So you can signal one. And when everyone has access to everyone, women who have a much finer filter for mating, because the downside of sex is so much greater for them if they get pregnant. So they have much finer filter. They end up all being drawn or expressing interest to a much smaller group of individuals. So what the dynamic is, you have 50 men on Tinder, 50 women on Tinder.

• 30:04Scott Galloway?

  Forty six of the women will express all of their interest to just four men, which leaves 46 men vying for the attention of just four women. So if you apply the Gini coefficient to online dating, it's got the same Gini coefficient as income inequality in Venezuela. So mating inequality is greater than income inequality in Venezuela. And what it leads to is what I call Porsche polygamy. And that is that men who are able, who are the top 10% in terms of attractiveness online get 90% of the interest. So that does not lead to good behavior or establishing long-term relationships. Kind of 50 to 90 percentile do okay. But the bottom half of attractiveness of men, based on online attractiveness, are totally shut out of the market.

• 30:50Scott Galloway?

  And as a result, in America, one in three males under the age of 30 has not had sex in the last 12 months. And I find people hear the term sex and their mind goes different places. I think of it as the key step to an elemental foundation of any society, and that is relationship. So in the US, what's happened with online dating is it's amazing for the top 10% of attractiveness of men. It's okay for the top half. It is a disaster for the bottom half. And when I say attractiveness, I mean by very crude metrics. So if your Tinder profile, I went to MIT, I just started at KKR and my Rolex accidentally is visible in my profile picture

• 31:31Scott Galloway?

  and I'm geolocated, living in Manhattan or living in Beverly Hills, you're going to get a massive amount of attention. The bottom half, who are not able to express anything other than wealth, which they may not have, are totally shut out of the market. And the knock on effect here is that we're producing too many of what is the most dangerous person in the world, and that is a young, broken, alone man. So the guy who attacked Salman Rushdie recently in the US, that wasn't about the fatwa. That was about a young man living in his mother's basement. When you hear about mass shooters in the US, you know who they are before you know who they are.

• 32:10Scott Galloway?

  So we are producing an enormous cohort of economically and emotionally non-viable men. And I think it's bad for society. I think it creates an existential risk for us. I think women, as a result, don't have as many, find there just aren't as many economically or emotionally viable men as they would like. Women are graduating at double the rates of college as men now. For every one male graduate, the next five years of college is going to be two women. And you think, well, okay, it's time women, it's time women leveled up. They're finally getting their due. Okay. But this has, just realize this has huge societal impacts because women made socio-economically

• 32:54Scott Galloway?

  horizontally an up, men horizontally a down. In sum, women with college degrees typically aren't interested in men without college degrees. So we're seeing less household formation, lower birth rates, and these things usually stunt an economy. So I think it's a big issue. And again, I think it comes down to providing more young, more opportunity for young people in general. I think if you had sort of gender-specific affirmative action towards men, it would just become so politicized and heated that it wouldn't be worth it. I think you need a massive leveling up of all young people that I think will disproportionately help young men. How do we get those bottom 50% of young men laid?

• 33:33Scott Galloway?

  I think you need to make them first and foremost more economically viable. I think more job opportunities. I think it builds confidence. I think you need to get them out of the house. I think it's vocational programs. I think it's opportunities to go to college or get some sort of certification. I think it's things as basic as social service or more opportunities for them to get together. Community. Yeah, and I think it's a certain amount of education that embrace some of the things that are wonderful be about being a man. Being aggressive is fine. Be physically fit and strong. I think we're blessed with, and this is true of men and women, I'm a big fan. I believe that a forward-looking indicator of your success is the amount of time you spend sweating versus watching other people sweat.

• 34:17Scott Galloway?

  Any person under the age of 30, man or woman, should be able to walk into any room and think, if shit got real, I could kill and eat everybody or outrun them. One or the other. And it's not about being ripped. It's not about being skinny. It's about being a stronger version of yourself. You'll be happier, less prone to depression, more attractive to other mates. You'll be kinder because you will feel more confident. So I think real embracing physical fitness. Young people have, one thing that's terrible about young people is they've gotten unhealthier consistently the last 50 years.

• 34:47Scott Galloway?

  I think social service and I think figuring out institutions and means, whether it's school or social service, so they can meet each other, develop friendships, fall in love, have more opportunities to have, not only make relationships, but have guardrails. Young men need guardrails. They need a girlfriend, a job to tell them, no, you need to put on a shirt and get into work. No, you can't get high and drunk every night. No, if you want to continue to have sex with me, you need to get your shit together. I think that's really important for a young man, especially young men. And young women need it as well, but just not as much. So I think what you have is a generation of young men that have no motivation, no guardrails. They get their dope hit of addiction on Robin Hood. They don't have the mojo to get out there and meet women as much because they're watching so much porn.

• 35:32Scott Galloway?

  They get, they get this illusion that they have some sort of worth or affirmation when they say angry things on social media that they get rewarded for. They become, they start blaming other people. Specifically, they start blaming women and they become much more prone to misogynistic content. They start believing in conspiracy theory. They're less likely to believe in climate change. And some, they become just really shitty citizens. And we're producing just a massive amount of these individuals. And the scary part is... We'll just ignore the weirdo and put them in the corner. The problem is, the government doesn't ignore them. Because we're very misogynistic when it comes to our elected leaders. In the US, we've been producing more female college graduates than male college graduates for the last forty years.

• 36:14Scott Galloway?

  But still, only twenty-eight percent of our elected representatives are female. People, societies, men and women, conflate leadership quality with height and depth of voice. So we will always, at least in the US for a long time, elect more men. And who do these men appeal to? How do they get elected? They appeal to this cohort of conspiracy-driven misogynistic anti-government men, young men. These young men will always have over-representation in government, which leads to elected leaders saying that they believe the elections are rigged. They stoke nationalist fears, they blame immigrants. I mean, really, really hateful stuff. And so not only are these individuals dangerous and unproductive, but what's even more unproductive

• 36:59Scott Galloway?

  is they will have a disproportionate voice in our politics. Because the easiest way to get elected is to tap into the tribal instincts or motives of this cohort.

• 37:10Steven Bartlett?

  You said misogynistic content there. And one of the things that came to mind when you said that was Andy Tate.

• 37:17Scott Galloway?

  Yeah.

• 37:17Steven Bartlett?

  Are you familiar with this person?

• 37:19Scott Galloway?

  Yeah.

• 37:19Steven Bartlett?

  Is Andrew Tate's message a symptom of what you've described?

• 37:25Scott Galloway?

  Hundred percent.

• 37:27Scott Galloway?

  You know, we live... Look, it's easy to credit your grit and your character for your successes and blame the markets for your failures. And so when you have a young man who is failing, he's looking for culprits. And then you have someone come along and say, "It's not your fault." And they start saying that the reason you can't find a date, it's women's fault. It's their fault, it's not yours. It's not that you haven't developed the skills or demonstrated the discipline to develop the attributes that others find attractive, it's their fault. And I think it's very dangerous, and most of it's a grift. The individual you represented claims it's not your fault in the "Buy My $49.95 Learn How to Be Successful" program. It really is a grift.

• 38:13Scott Galloway?

  And people, you know, Trump is sort of a version of that, right? I mean, if you think about what's happening in America, the Democratic Party is basically becoming the party of educated women, and the Republican Party is becoming the party of uneducated men. So, yeah, I think that those types of individuals are perfect examples of trapping, of kind of falling into this really ugly, you know, blame others kind of gestalt in our society. I think it's very unfortunate. I think we also on the, I have no idea what your politics are, Steve. I consider myself a progressive. I think progressives have to take back masculinity. And that is, we have to define what masculinity means and

• 38:55Scott Galloway?

  show a vision. Why are all the dudes these conservatives? So, I mean, I'll give you an example. I'm a profane and vulgar person. And on the left, they immediately complain, conflate, I've cursed several times on this show. I talk about sex very openly and very crudely. That doesn't mean I'm not, that doesn't mean I'm not a feminist. Doesn't mean I don't have progressive values. So I think the left needs to take back profanity and vulgarity, and I think we need to take back masculinity. I see masculinity as a man-made societal construct, but to, we need to identify it and then ask young men to foot to those skills. And I see it as very basic, in a very basic way, acquiring the

• 39:37Scott Galloway?

  skills and strengths that you can advocate for and protect others. Whether it's physical strength, mental strength, financial strength, kindness, intelligence. And I think saying, okay, it's great to be a man. Express your masculinity. And by the way, masculinity isn't just the domain of people who are born men. Women can demonstrate masculine features just as men can demonstrate feminine features. But I think the left or progressives need to take back this notion of masculinity. And we've sort of, we've sort of masculated on the left, men, because to be pro-man, to even acknowledge masculinity, is somehow to be anti-female on the left. And that's not true at all. You know who wants more men? Women. Well, that's what I find. So I think that a key to restoring balance, if

• 40:22Scott Galloway?

  you will, and not having our party split across gender lines, and pull this generation of failing young men out of this hole, is to redefine masculinity as something more evolved, more thoughtful, that involves intelligence, that involves kindness, that involves strength. But also on the left to say, it's okay to be a man. We can acknowledge our differences. It's okay to be aggressive. You know, when Russians pour over the border in Ukraine, you want some of that big dick energy. You know, there's some features of distinct to men that is really important in our society and should be celebrated. And all of it has been, in my opinion, not all of it. A lot of it has been on the left conflated with toxicity.

• 41:07Scott Galloway?

  And there's some of those attributes that can lead to terrible behavior. But most of it is a good thing in our society. Most of it is needed.

• 41:14Steven Bartlett?

  And there was a big smile on the front of your book.

• 41:16Scott Galloway?

  Yeah.

• 41:17Steven Bartlett?

  Part of the reason why you put that, what looks like a smiley face on it is because of this arc of happiness that you describe.

• 41:23Scott Galloway?

  Yeah.

• 41:24Steven Bartlett?

  That was quite surprising to me. What do you mean by an arc of happiness?

• 41:27Scott Galloway?

  Well, across almost every culture, the correlation between age and happiness is a smile. So zero to kind of 25 is beer, Star Wars, you know, making out, prom, college football, or Premier League football. Zero to 25 is usually pretty happy. 25 to 45 is what I call the shit gets real years. You realize that distinct to what your parents or your uni told you, you're not going to have a fragrance named after you or be a member of parliament. You have kids, you have economic stress. Someone you love a great deal gets sick and dies. Your parents, right? Life gets very hard, very fast, 25 to 45.

• 42:09Scott Galloway?

  And generally speaking, these are the least happy years. And then something wonderful happens, usually in your late 40s or early 50s. And that is you start recognizing the finite nature of life. Maybe you have some economic security. Maybe you've established relationships. Maybe you have these really wonderful things that are less awful, that look, smell and feel like you called kids. You realize that life is short. You start finding appreciate. I don't know if you remember this. Steve, do you remember going out with your parents and your mom? And your mom would like, a salad would come and she'd stop the table and say, "Look at how beautiful the salad is." Or just admire the flowers. And you think, you used to think as a kid, like, what the fuck? And when you realize it's so weird when you turn into your...

• 42:50Scott Galloway?

  I stopped outside my house. There's a garden and I just couldn't stop marveling at the garden. The garden's here. I've never seen anything like it. We have this garden across from us in the park and I'm like, who are the gnomes that come out at night and manicure this thing so perfectly? And I'm not into botany or horticulture and I can't stop marveling. I wouldn't have done that in my 27-year-old self, but I do it at my 57. I find, you find joy in new things. You find joy in the mundane as you get older and you get happier. And the happiest generation, the happiest age cohort is the cohort that should be the least happy because they're not healthy, is old people. So, the learning

• 43:32Scott Galloway?

  here is that if you wake up at 35 and you have a couple of kids and you have a spouse or you have a job, you know, and you think, shit, this is hard. I'm not that happy. Recognize that's part of the journey and just keep on keeping on. You know, happiness waits for you in most instances. So, happiness is absolutely a smile. And so, I think it's helpful just to know that, that as you move into your income-earning years, as you move into your mating and child-rearing years and the depth of work and your parents start aging, it's stressful and it's hard. And if you're unhappy or feel unhappy at times, that is normal. That's part of the journey. And for me, it was helpful to read that because I'm looking forward

• 44:16Scott Galloway?

  to all the happiness that's kind of coming my way and I can feel it as you get older. You just start finding joy in weird places.

• 44:23Steven Bartlett?

  When was the pit of your arc in your life? When were your hardest years as it relates to happiness?

• 44:32Scott Galloway?

  Well, losing my mom was tough for me. But I think that the pit for me, you're an entrepreneur, the highs are really high and the lows are really low. The closest I can equate it to is

• 44:46Scott Galloway?

  Is having a business like having a kid. You conceive the thing, it looks, smells and feels like you. And when it does well, it's just like when your kid scores a goal or is doing great or seems happy. There's just no joy like that. When something, you have your world of work, you have your world of friends and you have kids. You have kids, you have stupid, you'll find this out. When something goes wrong with one of your kids, the whole universe shrinks to what is wrong with your kid. I mean, nothing else matters and you just can't sleep. You're stressed, you're upset, you feel failure on a cosmic level. Cause this instinct that pours over us is if your kid is failing, you have failed on a more cosmic level. Cause you haven't been able to protect that kid. It's the same way with a business.

• 45:26Scott Galloway?

  So when your business fails, you just, it's impossible to remove yourself from that failure. My lowest moment, probably professionally was in the great financial recession of 2008. In 99, I was a young man and was wealthy on paper. I'd started several e-commerce companies. I didn't realize most of it was not my fault, that it was the market. And by the end of 2000, I was broke. I lost everything through the dot com crash. Clawed my way back to some level of economic security in 2007. Smacked again in 2008, lost almost everything. And then my young son or my oldest had the poor judgment to come marching out of my girlfriend. So I was broke and I had a son, a newborn.

• 46:10Scott Galloway?

  And a combination of the disappointment professionally, where I was now 40 years old and wasn't economically where I thought it would be, was really upsetting and disappointing. And then the stress, when you're a dude with no spouse or kids, you can kind of dance between the raindrops. If you need to, you can sleep on a couch. I always knew I could make a living, I could support myself. But living in New York, having what felt like economic failure, business failure and a kid. And it's like, okay, my failures are now this kid's failures. That was really stressful. It was also very motivating.

• 46:48Scott Galloway?

  You know, I'd made some money, so I had made enough money to live kind of a, kind of a fake wealthy life. I had nice clothes, a nice apartment, I could go to St. Bart's. I had just enough money to give the illusion of success. But there's no faking it when you have kids. This person's dependent upon you. I was living in New York. It's impossible not to make a good living in New York with kids. And so that was wildly stressful. It was like, okay, this is no longer about me. When I fail economically, I'm failing as a species. I'm failing as a dad. That was a rough time. Two thousand eight, two thousand nine was rough. But it was also very motivating because I got very serious and started working very hard.

• 47:31Scott Galloway?

  And again, I didn't see my kids. We had another kid two and a half years later. I didn't see much of my kids until the age of five. I, you know, I try and get home for bath time, but I was very focused on getting my household back on economic firm footing again. But that was very stressful.

• 47:49Steven Bartlett?

  That's your biggest professional failure. What about your biggest personal pit?

• 47:54Scott Galloway?

  Pit?

• 47:57Steven Bartlett?

  And what did it teach you?

• 47:58Scott Galloway?

  Oh, I don't know. I, I, I think, are both your parents still alive?

• 48:02Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 48:03Scott Galloway?

  Okay, so one of them will get sick and die. And that is the, the heart, the two things I found that kind of turned you into an adult are when you lose one of your parents. It's just the harshness of it is so unthinkable. As a species, we have an inability to wrap our head around death for good reason. Otherwise, we'd all just be freaked out and not willing to take risks and not hunt animals for fear they might kill us, not take risks, never go outside. So we purposely can't understand it. We can't imagine it. You can't imagine that this person's going to be gone and it is over. That is devastating. And it, it also just brings this harshness of life, like really

• 48:45Scott Galloway?

  present in front of you. But at the same time, it creates tremendous perspective that, wow, the mortality rate's a hundred percent. My kids are going to have the same tragedy when I die. And I think it, I think it can liberate you and realize that, okay, if I feel embarrassed, if I feel scared about risks, if I'm beating myself up over a mistake I made, you know what? It really doesn't matter that much. You should be kinder to yourself. You should be more forgiving. There's great work by my colleague at NYU, Adam Alter, on palliative care, where he surveys people who are weeks from the end.

• 49:22Scott Galloway?

  And they have a lot of regrets. They wish they'd lived the life they want to live. Whether it was being more open about their sexuality, being who they wanted to be with, going to the career they wanted to go with. They were living their lives for other people's a huge regret, or society. They wish they'd stayed in better contact with friends. But more than anything, their number one regret is they wish they'd been less harsh on themselves. And that is, again, life isn't about what happens to you, it's how you respond to what happens to you. And when someone dies and you realize the finite nature of life and that we all have the same end coming, I think it's liberating because what you realize is when you say something stupid at a board meeting, even when you have a business fail, when you pick a stock and it gets cut in half in two weeks, and you're just hating on yourself.

• 50:05Scott Galloway?

  When you say something stupid at a party, when you say something unkind unwittingly, and you're just like, Jesus, what was I thinking? And you're just beating yourself up. Realize it's the person you're worried about, what they think of you, your situation, it's gonna go really fast, and it's gonna be over. And all you're gonna have is the people that miss you. So you don't, you need to forgive yourself and you need to realize what feels important in the moment, isn't that important. And I found it very liberating. I was devastated losing a parent, and was really my only parent, but at the same time, it just gave me a lot of perspective. And then I think the second moment in your life we start to grow up is when you have a kid. Because up until that moment, and I'm naturally

• 50:50Scott Galloway?

  a selfish person, it comes, it comes very easily to me. But it's the first time in your life, you're more concerned with someone else's well-being. And it's, it's, it's a strange sense to want someone else, to be more concerned about someone else's well-being than yours. I mean, truly, more concerned. And it's somewhat liberating. When I was your age, on Friday, I'd start getting stressed like, what fabulous people am I hanging out with? What amazing thing am I doing? Well, how can I hang around more interesting and hotter people? How can I have better experiences, sex, more sex with hotter people, make more money, make more money? Now, it's like, okay, we got soccer practice Saturday morning, we got a playdate Saturday. It's all of a sudden just about them. I mean, it's literally

• 51:34Scott Galloway?

  just about them. And for the first few years, that takes them adapting. But what you find, I find it's relaxing now to be more focused on someone else. I find is relaxing and rewarding instead of just all you all the time. Right? So losing someone and gaining someone, I think are the kind of key moments where you sort of grow up. I mean, losing your parent is something that happens to everybody. Some of the economic strain I have, most people would pray for, but personal troughs, I've been really blessed so far.

• 52:13Steven Bartlett?

  You talked a little bit there about self doubt.

• 52:15Scott Galloway?

  Yeah.

• 52:16Steven Bartlett?

  Do you struggle with self doubt?

• 52:17Scott Galloway?

  Oh, yeah, I have a huge imposter syndrome, but I think it's healthy and I think most people have it. I think. Yeah, sure. Every time I've raised money, I've thought I was fooling them and committing fraud. Like, oh, God, I just raised $37 million for my ed tech startup. What were they thinking? What were they thinking? I don't, you know, weird things like I get, I'm sure you get fan mail or if people who listen to my podcast or want to meet me or have dinner with me, I don't like to do it because I always find they're going to be disappointed that the person they think I am, I'm just not that interesting or that cool.

• 53:01Scott Galloway?

  I always worry that at the end of the day, my natural state will be to be broken alone. That that's kind of like what my personality traits where they'll lead me. I have those fears every day. I have huge imposter syndrome. Yeah. So, but again, it's motivating. It's like, well, okay, prove yourself and them wrong. So I wouldn't describe myself. I'm not a, I'm confident on certain levels, but I always feel like a little bit, like every time I have an achievement and that I've like kind of fooled everybody.

• 53:33Steven Bartlett?

  Do you know where that comes from? Because I'm not sure if that's everybody. I sit here with a lot of people, so I see a variance.

• 53:39Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I really don't know. I don't know where. I don't know where it comes from, but yeah, I definitely have something whispering in my ear like, you know, who the fuck are you kidding? And yeah, you fooled them temporarily, but it's all going to come crashing down. Yeah, I have that.

• 53:56Steven Bartlett?

  When I was reading through a lot of things you'd said about yourself, you also had called yourself an asshole a few times.

• 54:01Scott Galloway?

  Mm hmm.

• 54:05Steven Bartlett?

  What do you mean by that? And why were you an asshole?

• 54:09Scott Galloway?

  Uh, yeah, someone who wasn't kind, someone who put their own needs ahead of other people. I wasn't very kind to my first wife. I should have been, as an early manager, I should have been kinder to my employees. Yeah, an asshole.

• 54:25Scott Galloway?

  Why?

• 54:25Steven Bartlett?

  Why? Or how?

• 54:27Scott Galloway?

  I don't know. I guess because I could, or I don't know. I like to think that I've gotten better as I've gotten older. I think in America, there's this,

• 54:37Scott Galloway?

  at least, and it's changing, in the world I grew up in. And I think it's kind of started with Steve Jobs.

• 54:45Scott Galloway?

  You know, here's a guy who, I think there's this unfortunate gestalt in American business that if you're talented and super nice, you're talented. If you're talented and a bit of an asshole, you're a genius. It was seen as leadership, to be in a room and get angry or point out the problems or dress somebody down. I think that's changed for the better in the last 10 years. But everybody was trying to be Steve Jobs. And there's no getting around it. He was cruel at work. He denied his own blood under oath to avoid child support payments while it was worth a quarter of a billion dollars. And that's the Jesus Christ of our information age economy.

• 55:30Scott Galloway?

  This was not a kind man. And so, in the tech community in the 90s, it was kind of rewarded to be, you know, you were a fighter, right? To be harsh. And I think a lot of that has changed for the better. You realize, you know, just as you get older, you're just younger, you're selfish. And I think I've gotten some early success. So I don't think I realized the extent to which luck played a role in that. But I've gotten better. You know, less of an asshole. What has allowed you to increase your self-awareness? You just get older. You just get not, you know, you just get older. You realize, I remember I had one moment and I was at a, I was in a meeting.

• 56:14Scott Galloway?

  I've always run my own companies. Yeah, before I joined NYU. I remember like, just nothing that big a deal, but this guy was presenting and he was having some slides. And I'm like, I might go back. I'm like, your slides make no fucking sense. I'm like, just don't, don't get us all in a room and present this garbage. Just kind of set it like that, those exact words. And he finished the presentation and then we were all, you know, afterwards, and I went to the men's room and he was in the men's room and he was next to me at the urinal. And I saw his hand shaking. He was so rattled by the thing that he had like a small palsy or whatever you call it. And I remember thinking, you know, I was finally getting to an age where I could start to be a little bit more self-aware. And kind of mind, what's the point of all this fucking success?

• 56:58Scott Galloway?

  If you just make other people feel like shit? Like, what's the point? And I thought, why did I do that? And some of it was to communicate that this was unacceptable. And it was the data that this person was presenting was unacceptable. But it would have been just, but part of it was for me to take the opportunity to elevate my own stature by diminishing someone else's. And that's entirely wrong. And what you realize as you get older is that you don't need to diminish other people's status to get to the same point. I should have taken him aside and said, come on, man. That data was, you can do better than that. This is what was wrong with it. This is what, how I think you should present the data.

• 57:37Scott Galloway?

  Realize that you're presenting to a group of people who are going to notice that that data contradicts the data on the next slide. And instead, uh, my need to feel, I don't know, important or whatever, put my own needs ahead of theirs. I think there's a lot of that. I don't think, I don't think it's a unique attribute, uh, but I, I'd like to think that I've starched most, most of that out of my professional life. I think you just get older. Hopefully you get kinder, you get more self-aware. But oh yeah, I look back on my career. There's a lot I'm not proud of. What are you still working on personally?

• 58:16Scott Galloway?

  Being present, you know, you regret and upset about the past, anxiety about the future, take you so out of the present, trying to enjoy. My son's at boarding school. The most difficult thing about moving here is I come home, my boy's not there, my 15 year old. That's really strange for me. You'll see when your kids are around, they become a limb. Like, when you're not around your kids, you feel as if something's wrong. I mean, the first, the first day away from them is amazing, and then it gets awful. You're like, oh, God, this is wonderful. I can sleep in. You know, I like, I used to like business travel, especially when they're babies. Babies are tough. But now you feel

• 58:58Scott Galloway?

  like you're like, you're like walking around without a limb. It's just, it's just weird. And my son's in boarding school here. And so coming home and not having him home is just very, very strange. So when he was home yesterday, he's only home for a day and a half on the weekends, trying to be very in the moment, trying to be present. I have a tough time. One of my talents as an entrepreneur, I think, is that I'm always thinking about work and focused on shit. So when I show up Monday morning, I've kind of got a head start because I'm thinking about problems, I'm thinking about stuff. But the problem is you're not that present. And it's very hard to balance those two because it's so competitive. I mean, I would imagine, I look around, I know your success, I would imagine

• 59:41Scott Galloway?

  you're constantly thinking about work, right? Thinking about new, new ways to improve things, people you can reach out to, emails you should send to encourage people, you know, just constantly think about it. Once you have kids, it's very hard to manage that balance because you want to be present. So I'm trying to be present. Also, I'm trying to slow time down. Time is falling off a cliff for me. I have a chat group with my college friends. It was yesterday. You know, when we were in college, it's it's just flown by the last thirty years, which means it's gonna go even faster and I'm gonna be eighty seven.

• 1:00:23Scott Galloway?

  So trying to slow time down, trying to be more present, that's what I'm working on. And, uh, uh, you know, just trying to be kinder. I think I think everyone should from day one just think, okay, how can I be more kind?

• 1:00:36Steven Bartlett?

  How do we slow time down? My, my, uh, my friend asked me the other day what my superpower would be. And that's what I said. I said, I wish I could pause time.

• 1:00:43Scott Galloway?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:43Steven Bartlett?

  And my like, I think it's toxic, my answer. I was like, cause then I could get my work done.

• 1:00:48Scott Galloway?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:49Steven Bartlett?

  And continue with with my life and then maybe I could DJ and learn, you know, some other things. But my, I've always said that that would, that would be my chosen superpower. But how does one practically slow time down so that thirty years doesn't fly past?

• 1:01:01Scott Galloway?

  So when you're a dad, one of the things you realize is you have this image that belief that your kids are gonna be into World War Two history and CrossFit. Those are the things I'm interested in. And what you find out is kids have their own interests. And if you wanna be a good dad, you have to lean into their interests. Otherwise, you're just not gonna have a very strong relationship with them. Cause they they're selfish. Kids are inherently selfish and they're like, oh, well, dad's really into World War Two history. So I'll go to the, you know, the, the British War Museum and I'll find it fascinating. You know, that doesn't happen. My kids, so yesterday I ended up at Life Size Monopoly, which is this life size monopoly game somewhere. And then for me, that's the seventh ring of hell.

• 1:01:43Scott Galloway?

  That's just, that's just, uh, but what you try to do to slow time down is I immediately go into like, okay, just ignore the thing, you know, check your email, be a good dad, just do, get through it, get through it. I find that you can slow time down by getting into stuff, like trying to like, so I really try and get in, get into life size monopoly and engage with my child and like, be a little bit over the top about it. And when they do cheers, scream loud, like trying to just get. Really into things because if you want time to pass, it will, it'll cooperate. But when you get really into stuff, even though you think it's stupid and cheesy and you're like, can't help but think, God, this is like Chinese water torture.

• 1:02:29Scott Galloway?

  I find that slows it down. I also find leaning into your emotions slows time down because it makes you more present. I didn't cry or laugh out loud from the ages of 30 to 44. For 14 years, I didn't cry once and I didn't laugh out loud. I lost the capacity to uncontrollably laugh and to cry. I just kind of forgot how to do either of those things. And emotions are things you have to practice. So I remember the first time I started crying and the first time I really laughed out loud with friends. I thought, God, did both these things feel great. And I started getting really into those things and feeling guilt when I do something stupid or like trying to really

• 1:03:11Scott Galloway?

  embrace my emotions because that indicates what's important to you, what moves you, what inspires you, what upsets you, what pisses you off. And I find emotions, like real raw emotions, when you register them and absorb them and like lean into the messy part of yourself, I find that slows time down. So getting into stuff and registering your emotions. And as a business person, you're taught to be a little bit stoic. You have this weird sense also as a man of masculinity that men don't feel their emotions. But you start forgetting what's important to you. You start forgetting what like is real, your things you're into, like what, what do you find hilarious?

• 1:03:53Scott Galloway?

  What makes you well up with tears because you find it so moving? Without being, without doing that stuff, you forget what's important to you. You forget like, you kind of lose your individualism. Anyway, so there's, and you talked to Simon Sinek, there's a bunch of people who have a lot of means, those are my, those are my two tricks.

• 1:04:15Steven Bartlett?

  In your book, The Algebra of Happiness, the third section's about health. And you spoke earlier about the importance of it. I've really recently, over the last two years, I'd say, learned the importance of health and make sure I work out pretty much every day. What are, why is health so important? Now, I've, I've been on my own journey to understand it. But one of the things you said was that the most common trait among CEOs is that they exercise regularly.

• 1:04:38Steven Bartlett?

  And even that you said you've made comments about alcohol being bad for us. Did you, did you take time to learn that? I know you've been working out since you were very, very young. But the overarching role of our health in everything.

• 1:04:53Steven Bartlett?

  What have you learned about that and the importance of it?

• 1:04:55Scott Galloway?

  Well, it's kind of where it all starts. I mean, this is not a rental, you know, it's not a trust rehearsal. Your body is it. I mean, you look, you, you look like an athlete. What do you do every day? What do you?

• 1:05:05Steven Bartlett?

  Thank you. I'll clip that and I'll put that in my bio.

• 1:05:11Steven Bartlett?

  I do a mixture, so I train for an hour every day. Jemima's in my fitness group, so about 90% of days a year we, we train. Yesterday was CrossFit. Yeah, yesterday was CrossFit, so.

• 1:05:23Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, so look, if you could do something that would make you less depressed, make you more likely to be successful, broaden your selection set of mates. I mean, wouldn't, wouldn't you want to take that drug every day? It's called exercise. We're happiest as a species in motion surrounded by others. We've been hunting and gathering. So the things you're going to remember in your life are usually not the CrossFit class, but walking around Rome with your family and your kids complaining. But being outside in some form of exercise with people you care about. So an exercise in feeling strong. I mean, it's been my antidepressant. If I don't, you know, I got here four, three, four days ago. I've only worked out once.

• 1:06:07Scott Galloway?

  I can feel myself, I'm angrier, I'm not as nice, I don't feel as good about myself. It's, I think for a lot of people, it is. It is the easiest means to an antidepressant. It's the closest thing we have to a youth serum. You have this basically 24 by seven security camera on in your brain, trying to figure out if you're adding value. That's the bad news. The good news is it's got terrible resolution and you can fool it. So if you're caring for other people, caregivers generally live longer because your brain will sense that you're caring for other people, you're social, you're touching people, you're concerned, and it releases a hormone that lets you stay alive. New mothers typically do not die. If you're exercising intensely, it fools the camera into believing that you're hunting

• 1:06:52Scott Galloway?

  prey or building housing and it says, let's keep this person around longer. So it is a great antidepressant. It's a great youth serum. I find you're just kinder, you're nicer, you're more confident. So, you know, it's, again, the thing that the Fortune 500 CEOs have most in common, it's not the schools they went to, it's not even their, it's not even their ethnicity. It is gender, only 483 of them are men. But more than any practice or attribute, it's that they work out four to five times plus a week. Physical fitness, again, it's one of my algorithms. You should not watch other people sweat for any longer than you sweat.

• 1:07:34Scott Galloway?

  And, you know, if, if you're watching other people sweat four hours a week and you're sweating one hour a week, you're in trouble. Do not, you have to sweat more than you watch other people sweat.

• 1:07:47Steven Bartlett?

  The other thing we have in common is our backgrounds in advertising and brand. You speak a lot about branding and advertising. I sat here with Rory Sutherland and that was one of our real best performing episodes. I didn't realize there was such a demand on, from our audience in terms of practical advertising knowledge. He talked a lot about Apple and Tesla and the secrets there. How has the, the, the landscape of advertising and a brand building a reputation changed in your lifetime? And what is the most important thing for brands to understand now, or some of the important things for brands to understand now, if they are to be successful?

• 1:08:22Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, so my first job in business school, I started a company called Profit Brand Strategy. That's now about 500 people. Now it's just called Profit. And the basic notion was, it was based on the principles of my professor my second year, David Ochris, considered the father of modern branding. And it was that the intangible associations with a brand or a set of products or services are the only sustainable advantage. That if you can wrap a set of products and services with these brand codes of masculinity, European elegance, youth, and then pound away at those associations using this incredibly cheap, efficient medium called broadcast advertising, you can take a marginal shoe, salty snack, marginal car, and get amazing margins on it.

• 1:09:07Scott Galloway?

  So that's been, from the end of World War II to the introduction of Google in the 90s, the algorithm for creating massive shareholder wealth was find a mediocre product, wrap it in amazing brand codes, and make people feel more patriotic or younger, stuff the channel with it, and print money. The P&Gs, the PepsiCo's of the world, you know, the Coca Colas, these were the economic titans of yesteryear. The sun has passed midday on that because our weapons of diligence, whether it's Google or TripAdvisor or Amazon reviews, now gets us to the best product without the benefit of this weapon of diligence called brand. When I came to London, I used to stay at the Four Seasons or the Mandarin Oriental. Why? Because someone else was paying, and their old was an eight.

• 1:09:49Scott Galloway?

  And then I went on TripAdvisor and I went on my social graph and I found out people love the Connet Hotel, or people love the Ferndale Hotels. So I started staying at the Haymarket. Why? I like a place with a nice gym and I want to hang out with people who are younger and cooler than me. So I started staying at boutique hotels. So all of a sudden, product became the bomb again, and then your ability to embrace these new mediums around social became more important than broadcast advertising. So the traditional metrics of branding, the traditional vehicles for branding, a brand identity and broadcast advertising that I've been preaching in brand strategy, the sun has passed midday. If you look at my curriculum, and the majority of curriculums in marketing departments, you could argue that we're just training people to go to work at Unilever or General Mills and be laid off 24 months later.

• 1:10:35Scott Galloway?

  Branding has become much more about innovation and actual product quality. Now that extends into how you discover the product, how you absorb the product, the community around it. But Tesla is a better product. Apple used to be an underpowered product with a great brand. Now it's a great brand with a superior product. So Airbnb is a much better product. These things are gen... Google is 10x better than what was there before it. So supply chain, design, the way you absorb the product, its ease of use. It's moved from what you call a brand economy to, for lack of a better term, an innovation economy.

• 1:11:16Scott Galloway?

  So rather than taking classes on advertising, I say, take classes on supply chain or analytics or really understand industrial design. There was a general feeling that all product quality had maxed out. And then the internet came along and unlocked all this product innovation. So cars, they felt, had hit a peak in terms of product quality. And then all of a sudden with the internet and GPS, you could tune a car up wirelessly. You can unlock the doors. There was all kinds of crazy things you could do with it, in addition to EV. I mean, there's just been so much actual innovation around the product. And what do the most valuable companies in the world have in common?

• 1:12:01Scott Galloway?

  They either spend no money on advertising or they're spending less. Apple's the strongest brand in the world, at least a consumer brand, I would argue the strongest brands in the world universities. But it's reallocated $6 or $7 billion out of broadcast advertising into its channel, into stores, to build 550 temples to the brand. And I think that is almost part of the product. My 12-year-old and I were bored yesterday, so we went to the Apple Store. So that's kind of consuming the product. And I ended up buying screensavers and new cases that I'm sure are 90 points of gross margin that I could find at Finac or Best Buy or somewhere for less money. But we want to be in that store and in that environment. So it's moving out of pre-purchase broadcast advertising into the distribution channel and into innovation. But the traditional...

• 1:12:46Scott Galloway?

  The traditional norms of marketing or branding as I taught it, that shit's over. Don Draper has been drawn and quartered. If you're watching a lot of advertising, it means your life hasn't worked out. The majority of people who are technically literate or wealthy can avoid 80, 90% of advertising now. They watch Netflix, they subscribe to Spotify. They live in cities where they have local officials that demand you can't see a billboard from a park.

• 1:13:17Scott Galloway?

  So the advertising is a tax on the poor and the technologically literate. So it's moved to more distribution and innovation. But for God's sakes, don't you know, avoid falling into the trap of thinking that the masters of the universe are branders or advertisers.

• 1:13:36Steven Bartlett?

  If they are innovators, then how does one make themselves or their team more innovative? This is the question I get asked all the time.

• 1:13:42Scott Galloway?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:43Steven Bartlett?

  When I speak at conferences or to businesses, it's well, you know, how do we, how do we make our 500 people in our company innovate? Cause you'll see the CEO standing, you know, in front of the the board meeting on all the all hands and say, we need to be more innovative.

• 1:13:55Scott Galloway?

  Yeah. What does that mean?

• 1:13:56Steven Bartlett?

  That's fuck all. We all know that.

• 1:13:58Scott Galloway?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:58Steven Bartlett?

  But by design, how do, how do we create an innovative mindset ourselves or innovative teams?

• 1:14:05Scott Galloway?

  That's a tough one. I don't consider myself an expert on culture, although it's clearly out there. Like I think of HBO. HBO, if there's a show that people are talking about, I don't know if the same is true. But in the US, people are talking, if there's a show, people are talking about the water cooler. It's Euphoria, it's Succession. It's generally an HBO show and they have about a third of the budget of some of the other streaming networks. So there's something about that culture where they're able to come up with kind of breakthrough creative.

• 1:14:34Steven Bartlett?

  Some companies just seem to do that time and time again.

• 1:14:36Scott Galloway?

  Agreed.

• 1:14:37Steven Bartlett?

  And so it's a culture thing at the heart of it, even Apple, you know, especially in the era of Steve Jobs, they seem to take some unbelievably scary bets that paid off. Obviously a lot of them don't, some of them don't, but Amazon's the same, AWS, the Kindle.

• 1:14:55Scott Galloway?

  A hundred percent. Yeah. So you know, I mean, you know, there's some basics. It's a willingness to fail, to take big bets, to reward people for taking risks. I think an external viewpoint that's constantly benchmarking other companies. I mean, my last from L2, essentially what we did was we went out and benchmarked the best practices of every company in social e-commerce payments and then came in and said, okay, Unilever, okay, Nike, what can you learn from everyone from Adidas to Tata Motors? Like, what are they doing that's really interesting? So having an external viewpoint, a willingness to take big bets. I also think of holding people accountable.

• 1:15:33Steven Bartlett?

  Founder-led businesses seem to be much more innovative. Obviously, I think they often fail quicker as well, but they seem to have a higher risk appetite than founder-led businesses. We have a closing tradition on this podcast.

• 1:15:45Scott Galloway?

  All right.

• 1:15:46Steven Bartlett?

  Where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest. They don't know who they're leaving it for, and I don't get to read it until I open the book. The question that's been left for you.

• 1:15:59Scott Galloway?

  Okay. So I get to know who left it?

• 1:16:03Steven Bartlett?

  You don't.

• 1:16:03Scott Galloway?

  I don't? Okay.

• 1:16:09Steven Bartlett?

  What is your biggest regret personally? And if you could go back, what would you do differently?

• 1:16:16Scott Galloway?

  It's funny, it's the questions that are obviously the hardest. My biggest regret personally, I wish I had been kinder from an earlier age. I think it's good for the world. I think it makes me feel more masculine. It makes me feel more successful to be kind, and I didn't stumble upon that. I wish I'd come to that realization sooner, that to be generous, to be loving, to be... You know, Cindy Galopp, a friend of mine, says that the most wasted resource is good intentions. I wish my good intentions had, I was more ready, more confident to articulate the kind thoughts

• 1:17:00Scott Galloway?

  I had about others and to articulate them with more ease. I've thought good things about other people. I've wanted to do good things for a long time, but I didn't have the confidence or the discipline to either say them or do them. I wish I'd had that confidence earlier because the majority of us are good people, the majority of us admire other people, the majority of us love other people. And we don't want to articulate it. I think especially men because we're worried that saying, I admire you or, you know, you're just such a handsome, young, buff man who's, who's acquired so much success at a young age. I'm kind of like trying to figure out, I'd love to know, like, how did you do all this at such a young age? Saying that is embarrassing for a man. There's this feeling among men that me saying

• 1:17:43Scott Galloway?

  that makes me less successful and masculine, like it's a zero sum game. And what you realize as you get older is that is, that is how you feel strong and how you feel kind. I wish I'd figured that out earlier. I wish I'd been more forthcoming with my positive emotions.

• 1:18:03Steven Bartlett?

  Does that end up making us miserable personally? So if I, if I held that kind of, it's almost a form of resentment, isn't it? We, I think we all have it. I think when Justin Bieber came onto the scene and I looked over and there was this like 14 year old that had all the women and he was beautiful and he was selling out these arenas. I'm thinking, fuck this guy.

• 1:18:18Scott Galloway?

  Well, schadenfreude. I mean, it's just resentment of other people's success. I think that's different. I think, I think Justin Bieber warrants some hate. But-

• 1:18:28Steven Bartlett?

  For sure. But the reason I, I was hating on him was purely jealousy. It was-

• 1:18:32Scott Galloway?

  Fair enough. But I, my sense is you seem pretty self actualized at your age. I was at the age of 30 as an entrepreneur. If my team was doing a great job and there was a great shot, I rewarded them at the end of the year with a bonus. As you get older, what you realize is young people need watering. It doesn't matter how successful they are, it doesn't have much money they're making. When you say, I sent a text this morning, we did a, my prop G has this new thing called, we have something called a markets podcast, which is focused on the markets. The team did such an amazing job with the sound edits today and it's a 24 year old. It's a 24 year old doing this shit. And she has such a feel,

• 1:19:15Scott Galloway?

  her name's Claire Miller, she has such a feel for how to integrate sound and music and knows when to fade it in and fade it out. And I immediately register that and I think, oh, me registering that is really good for her because I'm the boss. Well, why wouldn't you pull out your phone and say, your integration of sound here is so striking and your talent is so ahead of where you are. And I did that. And I know when she wakes up this morning and gets that text message, it's just gonna-

• 1:19:46Scott Galloway?

  Make her morning. It's just gonna make her morning. Twenty years ago, I didn't think to do that.

• 1:19:52Steven Bartlett?

  Why?

• 1:19:53Scott Galloway?

  I don't know. I just didn't do it. Just didn't. I don't know. Selfish. Didn't wanna give up that. Again, saw it as somewhat of lazy. Not kind. I don't know.

• 1:20:04Steven Bartlett?

  Is there an element of thinking that if you give the compliment, then someone can become complacent or they can become, they might not strive?

• 1:20:12Scott Galloway?

  As hard, maybe. I don't know. I saw my job as a CEO back when was all over everybody all of the time. I mean, just all the time. And I'm still like that, not as bad.

• 1:20:25Steven Bartlett?

  A little bit as well, to be fair.

• 1:20:26Scott Galloway?

  And look, there's, that's, you can do that and still be kind. I was on a panel with other CEOs and they asked, what is your management philosophy? And this one woman who runs a very successful startup said, it's putting people in the role to succeed. And the other one, and the other person said, it's, it's helping people find their true self, finding what they're really passionate about. And then it came to me like, I'm all fucking over everybody all of the fucking time. And everything, you know, I just went dark. I'm like, I don't know how else to do it. I'm just all over. And I realized maybe that's why I've never been able to grow a billion dollar business.

• 1:21:06Scott Galloway?

  Cause I'm just too, I don't wanna say in the weeds. I do give people, I think, a decent amount of latitude, but I don't know how else to do it, just to, you know, kind of be all over everything all of the time. I don't, maybe that's why, again, I don't, I'm not running a multi-billion dollar franchise.

• 1:21:26Steven Bartlett?

  I can relate. I can relate. I can relate to that a lot. But that's a conversation for another time, I guess, because it's not as much about me. But thank you, Scott, for your time and your wisdom. I followed you for some time and I remember going out to Bali a couple of years ago, grabbing the book in the airport when I was off to write my own book. So I, your book was a source of inspiration for me. I remember reading it on my desk there in Ubud. And that's why I was surprised it wasn't behind me today, but I guess it's upstairs. And your bullshit free approach to sharing yourself and your ideas is

• 1:22:00Steven Bartlett?

  Incredibly important. I think we've seen a sort of a decline in a willingness to be both vulnerable and brutally honest about our perspectives. And it doesn't mean our perspectives are always correct, but the collision of two ideas that are honest, I think, is how we ultimately lead to progress. So I love that. And that's why we ultimately have this podcast. Your new book, Adrift, America and a Hundred Charts, is out now.

• 1:22:26Scott Galloway?

  Yep.

• 1:22:27Steven Bartlett?

  Why did you write that book? Of all the things you, you know, you know so much about so many things, and you talk about so many topics, why that book?

• 1:22:35Scott Galloway?

  I'm fascinated with the idea of a nation and connective tissue. I feel very patriotic. As I get older, I'm more grateful for my blessings. And one of my blessings, I talked about was being born in America. And I wanted, I love charts. We've been communicating with words since the alphabet for 1,500 years, but we've been communicating with images, whether it was reading them off the cave walls, or the walls of caves, or looking at the height of the sun in the sky for tens of thousands. So I've always been really drawn to charts. We can process information six to 60 times faster when it's visual. So I thought, how can I create a narrative around what ails America and what are some of the solutions with charts? So it's a chart, and then a narrative, second chart and a narrative, all grouped into themes. And also, I just want to write a book every 12 to 15

• 1:23:19Scott Galloway?

  months. I feel like it's the hardest thing I do, but I feel like it keeps me sort of young.

• 1:23:24Steven Bartlett?

  And some of those narratives are conversations we've had today, but explained in more context. And all of your books have been important. For me, it's because of the way that you write.

• 1:23:33Scott Galloway?

  Oh, thanks.

• 1:23:34Steven Bartlett?

  It's not, it's not just the content itself, but it's writing in such an accessible way, which can make a very complicated theme be accessible to someone like me, who is not, I don't consider myself to be an intellectual in any capacity. And thank you for your time today. It's a real stroke of luck that you now live in London and you're able to be here and do this. And I feel very honoured that you came. So, thank you.

• 1:23:52Scott Galloway?

  I appreciate that. Congratulations on all your success.

• 1:23:54Steven Bartlett?

  Thank you so much, Scott. It's a pleasure.