680: Scott Galloway: Action Absorbs Anxiety, Handling the Haters, Becoming an Excellent Storyteller, Reverse Engineering Your Success, The Importance of Novelty, and Why Praise Is the Most Underrated Leadership Tool

Go to Go to https://www.learningleader.com/becoming to see the pre-order bonuses for The Price of Becoming This is brought to you by Insight Global https://insightglobal.com/learningleader/. If you need to hire one person, hire a team of people, or transform your business through Talent or Technical Services, Insight Global's team of 30,000 people around the world has the hustle and grit to deliver. My Guest: Scott Galloway is the New York Times bestselling author of books including The Four, The Algebra of Happiness, Post Corona, Adrift, and The Algebra of Wealth. Notes: Key Learnings Routine speeds up time, novelty slows it down. If you want life to go fast, just spend it alone and have a routine and never bust out of that routine. What makes life interesting is diversity in people, because people are complicated, and relationships are complicated. Lean into your emotions to slow time down. If you see something that moves you, stop, think about it, ask yourself why it moves you, and try to cement that moment in your brain. Otherwise, you're not sleepwalking through life; you're sleep sprinting. "The greatest wasted resource in history is good intentions that don't get articulated." No matter how famous someone is, they love affirmation as much as anybody else. Good thoughts that don't get articulated are wasted. Absorb when you're upset and lean into emotions, good and bad. This sort of marks the day and slows things down. Otherwise, if you get up every morning, do the same thing, eat the same thing, have the same relationship, the week's just gonna go really fast. Reverse engineer your success to things that aren't your fault. What are the things that played a role in your success that you had no control over? Your luck, your good fortune. For Scott: big government, assisted lunch, Pell Grants, University of California, technology financed by middle-class taxpayers, DARPA, the internet, deep pools of capital, and acceptance of failure. His mom told him he had value every day. Scott's mom, every day, implicitly and explicitly, told him and communicated to him that he had value. That builds a basic confidence that manifests in different ways: the confidence to fail, approach strangers, believe you're worthy of love, that you'll add value to a company, and that you can ask for tens of millions of dollars from someone. When good things happened, he used to call his mom. Whether it was getting a bonus at Morgan Stanley or striking up a conversation with a woman at Starbucks and getting her number, Scott used to call his mom. Your parents can bask in your victory, and you can brag to your parents, and it's okay. If there's no one there with you, it's like it didn't happen. Scott travels for business and stays at really nice hotels, and inevitably gets upgraded to the penthouse or the George V in Paris when he's alone. But if there's no one there with you, it's like it didn't happen. Celebrate victories, tell people how much they mean to you. You have to call your friends, celebrate their victories, celebrate your own, and tell people how much they mean to you. Every day, no matter what, tell your kids you're proud of them and love them. No matter how much Scott's kids piss him off, at some point, he finds a way to say, "I'm proud of you, and I love you immensely. You know that, right?" He hopes they have that same kind of base or pillar of confidence he had his whole life. Having someone tell you they believe in you every day works. You don't have to be a baller or successful. Just having someone in your life and every day telling them they mean a lot to you, they can't help but not believe you after a while. Being a leader isn't about being the smartest person in the room. Scott used to think being a leader was being the smartest person in the room, and he had trouble, especially with other men, thinking if he acknowledged someone else was doing a good job, somehow that made him less impressive. You have so much currency as a founder or manager. If you're in a management or leadership role, much less a founder, you have so much currency to pull someone into a conference room and say, "You were outstanding in that meeting" or "I just read this, and I love this paragraph. God, where did you come up with this idea?" You literally see these people just light up. "If you're thinking it, say it." The instant you're thinking something positive about somebody, just tell them, text them, call them. Don't wait. We have a tendency to think other people are telepathic, that they must sense we think they're wonderful. No, they don't sense it. Articulate it. When you're on your deathbed, you're not gonna think "I gave too much praise at work and told too many people how much they meant to me." Young people need watering. If you don't give young people feedback and praise when they deserve it, it's like having a ton of capital and not spending it. Especially with young people, they need watering. Feedback is incredible compensation. Whenever someone does something good, Scott tries to remind himself via email. Then, when he does their review at the end of the year, it's like, " Wow, this dude is paying attention. That is a form of compensation. Give thoughtful reviews that show you understand them. Tell them what they need to develop to get to the next level. Pay for the courses they need. They're a single mom who needs flexibility and wants to make more money. That's compensation. "Become a clip machine." Certain people are clip machines: James Clear, Morgan Housel, Kat Cole, Scott Galloway. These are people who communicate ideas in ways that are instantly shareable and memorable. For leaders, becoming an effective communicator isn't optional anymore. You need to be able to inspire and move people. The ability to write well is the stem of storytelling. It forces you to manage your thoughts and think things through. It's difficult to be a great storyteller if you can't write at a competent level. Rank yourself across every medium and go deep on one. Look at every medium (texting, LinkedIn, short form video, TikTok, long form writing, speaking), rank yourself, listen to yourself, decide what your specialty is, and then go very deep into one. Figure out your medium and commit to being in the top 1%. Challenge yourself to be in the top 10% within a year, the top 1% within three years. Identify which medium you have skills in, then challenge yourself. If you're in the top 6,000 podcasts out of 600,000 that put out content every week, you're in the top 1%. "Social media may make you want to shower after you use it, but it's frightening how powerful it is." In terms of economic power and influence, it's frightening how powerful social media is right now. If you're a young person and you want to be influential or economically secure, you need to master it. Storytelling is the enduring skill to give your kids. Scott's core competence is storytelling. His superpower is attracting and retaining people who help leverage his skills. The most radical act in a capitalist society is not participation. Scott started Resist and Unsubscribe because action absorbs anxiety. He was sick of being virtuous and courageous on a keyboard or a mic and wanted to do something. "Ready, fire, fucking aim on this thing called life." Scott wants to dance like no one is watching. He's gonna be dead soon, and it's all going really fast. He doesn't want to look back and think about losing sponsors or what people thought was stupid. He wants to think, "Right on, I tried to do something." He wants to be that guy who was unafraid, who showed up with a carpool to try and make a difference. Your spending or lack thereof is a weapon hiding in plain sight. The government most quickly responded six years ago during COVID, not because tens of thousands of people were dying, but because the GDP crashed 31%. The president backs away from plans when the bond market or stock market goes down. Even a gnat on an elephant matters. Even if it's just a gnat on an elephant, enough gnats will take down an elephant. If you have economic security and people who love you unconditionally, you have an obligation to speak out. Sam Harris has this great saying: if you have economic security and people who love you unconditionally, then you have an obligation to speak out and speak your mind, because most people don't have that luxury. Do what makes you feel good about yourself. It's not easy being mediocre-looking; it takes real effort. Scott grew up very skinny with bad acne and thinks maybe he's a little too focused or self-conscious about his looks. America is ageist, and looks matter. New York is the ultimate tip of the spear for a capitalist society, and it's optimized for two people: hot women and rich guys. For everyone else, it's a soul-crushing experience. We can talk about the way the world should be and the way the world is. That's the way the world is. Start working out. Scott coaches young men: start working out. It's good for your head. It shows women and employers you're in shape, not just because it looks good (which it does), but because it reflects how you show up, that you have discipline, that you can commit to something. The rule of threes puts you in the top 5% of attractiveness. If you work out three times a week or more, if you spend at least 30 hours a week working outside of the house, and put yourself in the company of strangers (church group, nonprofits, sports league), just by doing those three things, you put yourself in the top 5% of attractiveness of young males. Anyone who's had great yeses has had a shit ton of no's. If you can be in the top 5% and learn how to mourn and move on from rejection, at some point, you'll be voluntarily celibate, which is awesome. There were hundreds of no's for you to get to a top podcast. You get used to no. No one has the right to a living or to reproduce. If you want to score above your class economically or romantically, get out a big spoon and get ready to eat shit. It's what everyone of us has done. "I'm constantly worried about my boys now." Scott didn't worry about his kids when they were little unless they were sick - they were safe and home. Now he's worried about them all the time: are they doing okay at school? Is the quiet one okay? His champagne toast moment would be celebrating his son's first year of college going well - having fun, a good friend group, a couple of dates, football games, and gearing up for sophomore year. Reflection Questions What things played a role in your success that you had no control over? Your luck, your good fortune. How does reverse engineering to those things change your perspective? Who in your life needs to hear that you're proud of them and that they mean a lot to you? When's the last time you actually said it? Rank yourself across every medium you participate in (texting, LinkedIn, video, writing, speaking). What's your specialty? Are you willing to commit to being in the top 1% of that medium within three years? More Learning #578: Scott Galloway https://learningleader.com/scottgalloway5778/ - The Algebra of Wealth #492: Scott Galloway https://learningleader.com/scottgalloway492/ - Finding What You're Good At #396: Scott Galloway https://learningleader.com/scottgalloway396/ - Turning Crisis Into Opportunity Podcast Chapters 00:00 Preorder my new book https://amzn.to/4cNwKso! 02:45 Meet Scott Galloway 04:13 Resilience To Criticism 05:43 Slowing Time With Novelty 08:43 Scott's Mom Building Confidence 14:52 Use Praise As a Leadership Currency 24:27 Becoming A Great Storyteller 31:06 Resist And Unsubscribe Origins 35:35 What Comes Next 37:13 Facing Both Backlash and Support 39:45 Living Unafraid 41:23 Why Sell Prof G? 42:37 Building Enterprise Value 46:46 The Openness of Cosmetic Surgery 48:47 The World's View on the Physical 50:42 Rule of Threes for Men 53:11 Scott's Champagne Toast 56:52 The Belief of Reasonable Politics 58:10 Where to Find Scott Online 01:02:14 EOPC

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

• 0:00Ryan Hawk?

  I am pumped to share that a project I've been working on for the past two years, my next book titled The Price of Becoming is now available to preorder. Now, why are preorders important? Well, they help determine the book's placement in bookstores, online, and they tell my publisher that they need to print a ton of these things so we don't run out like we have in the past when people have waited till launch week to buy it. So if you're going to buy it anyway, I'd love it if you would preorder it right now. A cool bonus for early preorders. If you go to learningleader.com and send us your preorder receipt from Amazon, we will send you a digital copy immediately.

• 0:41Ryan Hawk?

  And we've put together some other cool preorder bonuses you can see at learningleader.com. You may be asking, well, who's the book for? It's for eights and nines who want to be tens. If you're listening to this podcast, that means it's probably for you. You're doing really well, and yet you still have this desire to do even better. That's who The Price of Becoming is for. It's a deeply personal book where I share some of my failures, as well as how I've worked through them, and the stories, science, and practical application of the more than 700 people I've interviewed over the past 11 years. I think this book could change your life.

• 1:23Ryan Hawk?

  If you read it and implement the key actions shared in each chapter, I think it could be transformational for you. Now, much more to come, but please go to learningleader.com and preorder The Price of Becoming right now. I would be so grateful. Thank you so much for your support.

• 1:46Ryan Hawk?

  Welcome to the Learning Leader Show presented by Insight Global. I am your host, Ryan Hawke. Thank you so much for being here. Go to learningleader.com for show notes of this and all podcast episodes. Go to learningleader.com. Now, on to tonight's featured leader. Scott Galloway is a professor of marketing at NYU Stern. School of Business. He's a serial entrepreneur and bestselling author of many books. He's built and sold multiple companies, advised on boards and become one of the most provocative voices in business and culture today. This is his fourth appearance on the Learning Leader Show.

• 2:27Ryan Hawk?

  His first time was more than seven years ago. During our conversation, we discussed how he's become more resilient to criticism and the specific mindset shift that made it possible. Then we talked about the role his mom played in building his confidence and how that shapes how he leads other people today. Then we talked about storytelling and why it's the most underrated skill in business. And finally, Scott shared what he wants his kids to say about him someday and whether his current life is actually building towards that. We went all over the place, both personal and professional. My favorite kind of conversations. Ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy

• 3:09Ryan Hawk?

  my conversation with Scott Galloway. Scott, so this is your fourth time on the Learning Leader Show. First time is episode 272, seven years ago. I'm curious, I think you're a pretty self-aware guy. What have you gotten better at noticeably over the past seven years?

• 3:30Speaker 01

  I think I'm less sensitive or more immune to criticism.

• 3:35Ryan Hawk?

  Really?

• 3:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, it used to really upset me. A couple of times, people would say something about me, you know, critical of me online or what I felt was unfair and it would really upset me. It still upsets me, but less so. I mean, on a personal level, you have kids, Ryan, right? So mine are 15 and 18. And when they're little, it's hard to imagine they're ever going to leave.

• 4:00Speaker 01

  And now my oldest just got admitted to college and some kind of following him around the house. I think I've gotten a greater understanding of the finite nature of life. I think that happens as you get older. For most of our species' existence on this planet, we died at the age of 35. So we can't really imagine we're going to live that long. And so time goes faster than you think. So I think I have a better appreciation for time. I think I've gotten a little bit, or at least recently, I'm a little bit more trying to rediscover my taste for public failure. I'm trying to do more actions off the keyboard instead of just barking into a mic. But yeah, a little bit more at peace with myself, I think. But that's a thoughtful question. I think I would need to ruminate on it longer.

• 4:44Ryan Hawk?

  There's a couple of quotes from an Esquire story I read about you recently, and this actually makes me think of one of them. So I want to bring it up and hear you riff on a little bit more. You said, if you want your life to last longer, if you want to be more informed about what you find interesting, what you find moving, what you find funny, what things really give you joy. You need to lean into your emotions. Otherwise, you're not sleepwalking through life, you're sleep sprinting. This really, that part hit me. You won't have experienced a lot. For me, this is a deliberate attempt to turn my 80 or 90 years on this planet into 150. Can you say more about that?

• 5:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, there's research that if you want life to go fast, just spend it alone and have a routine and never bust out of that routine. Because what makes life interesting is diversity in people because people are complicated and relationships are complicated. So I have noticed I ought to go to India. It's never been something I'm interested in, but I'm going to India because I want to slow my life down. I don't want to market. I want to see the Taj Mahal or a Bengal tiger with my kids. I'm an introvert. I'm very, it's very easy for me to stay home. I'd like to stay home tonight and take an edible and watch Netflix. Instead, I'm meeting friends out who are in town and, you know, it'll mark the time.

• 5:59Speaker 01

  So doing things that are unusual, that take you out of your routine, travel, relationships, that just kind of slow time down. And then the other thing is I try to laugh out loud. I try to absorb when I'm upset and lean into my emotions. Good and bad, because it just sort of marks the day and slows things down. Otherwise, if you get up every morning, do the same thing, eat the same thing, have the same relationship, the week's just going to go really fast. And so I try to be disruptive around my time and do a lot of different things and push myself. But really, if I see something that moves me, I try and stop. Think about it, ask myself why it moves me and try and cement that moment in my

• 6:43Speaker 01

  brain and just slow time down because it's just, I don't know the term is asymptotic. It just starts falling off a cliff. You're going to see this months or months when you're 30, then they, in their 40s, they become weeks and then in your 50s, they become days. And so I'm purposely trying to come up with a series of hacks around slowing time down.

• 7:03Ryan Hawk?

  It seems that creating novel events. It's like when you go on vacation, sometimes even though they're great, I went on vacation with friends recently last summer. One of my buddies, Darren Stokes, who was with me, goes, "Man, it feels like we've been here forever." And it was beautiful. We were in the Bahamas. It was amazing, but it's because we were doing things that we never do. And I think creating novel moments, I sense that you are really optimizing for novel.

• 7:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a thoughtful way of putting it. Routine and the rote, speed up time. And I like what you said, the novel and artisanship and emotion, slow it down. So I try to do that.

• 7:41Ryan Hawk?

  I love it. I mean, I listen to all your shows. I've told you this for years. And one of the things I know you get a lot of feedback on that I'll double down on is when you share your emotion and when you talk about your family and when you talk about your mom, you talked about your dad. One of the things you said about your mom, you said every time she'd revisit her will, she would put a little post-it in it because she knew eventually I, meaning you, was going to read it. She would write notes saying, quote, "You're the best thing in my life." And then she would write one, two months later that'd say, "Still are." I mean, that really moved me, man. And my parents are still my heroes to this day. And so it's cool to read that. How did having someone

• 8:22Ryan Hawk?

  like your mom impact you as a man, as a leader, as somebody who is going to make a difference in the world, as someone that had so much belief in you?

• 8:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, another generous question. So I say I'm a middle-aged man who hasn't gone over the death of his mother. And I used to think that maybe I have a problem and I need grief counseling, but I kind of hope my kids feel the same way about me. Need to talk about my mom without getting emotional. And it's become, you know, my mom raised me. On the salary of a secretary, lived and died a single government mother. But as you get older, you know, the good news is you get more thoughtful. The bad news is you get more thoughtful. And I think it's a good exercise to reverse engineer all of your success to the things that aren't your fault. What are the things that played a role in your success that you had no control over? You know, your luck, your good fortune. And the very first thing for me, and it's a lot of things for me. It's got big government.

• 9:18Speaker 01

  I had assisted launch, Pell Grants, University of California, the technology financed by middle-class taxpayers, DARPA, the internet, an incredible capital, deep pools of capital so I could raise money and an appreciation or an acceptance of failure. Most of the shit I've done is I've failed at, and America loves to, you know, forgive, I guess. But going to the very core, my mom, every day implicitly and explicitly told me and communicated to me that I had value. And I think that that built sort of a base of confidence. And that confidence manifests in different ways, whether it's the confidence to fail or approach strangers, or believe you're worthy of love, or that you'll add value to a company, or that you can ask for tens of millions of dollars from someone, because

• 10:03Speaker 01

  why not? But I think that basic confidence, that initial pillar came from, my mom used to stop me, like, I remember, we used to go to, we used to get deli every night at this place called Junior's on Westwood Boulevard, every Sunday night. And I was, I remember this, I was in high school, about six foot, 130 pounds, terrible acne, you know, not Brad Pitt, let's just put it that way. And my mom would stop in the middle of dinner and look at me and hold my hand and go, you are so handsome, do you know how handsome you are? And it was like, I knew I wasn't, but just this person telling me that, you know, or

• 10:44Speaker 01

  she would celebrate Sony, my victories, and there's still something very strange that it's mostly gone away, but are your parents still alive? Mm-hmm. Do you call them when something good happens to you? Yeah, absolutely. So anytime anything good happened to me, I used to call my mom, whether it was getting a bonus at Morgan Stanley, or striking up a conversation with a woman at Starbucks and getting her number, I used to call my mom and say, oh, you know, this happened to me, my mom. You know how it is, you can brag to your parents or boast, and it's okay. You know, they like to bask in your victory. And after my mom passed, for a good decade, when something good happened to me, it's as if it didn't happen.

• 11:25Speaker 01

  It's, it's the, the effect it is, is I travel a lot for business and I stay at really nice hotels because someone else is paying. And inevitably, just always, I get upgraded to the penthouse of the George Stank in Paris whenever I'm alone. And you're in some amazing hotel room overlooking the Seine or view of Eiffel Tower. But if there's no one there with you, it's like it didn't happen. If there's no one to share with, it doesn't happen. And for a good decade, when anything good happened to me, it was like it didn't happen because my first instinct was to call my mom. And then her celebrating it cemented it. It actually happened.

• 12:06Speaker 01

  And it was just very strange to have this reflex when ever anything good happened to me, it felt like it didn't because my mom used to cement it. You know, it's kind of everything and you got to get good at it. You got to call your friends, celebrate their victories, celebrate your own, tell people how much they mean to you. But something I've taken from my mom is just very straightforward. You know, she was a good friend. She was a kind person. The absolutely the thing I do every day, no matter how much my kids piss me off or whatever, at some point I find a way to say, I'm proud of you and I love you immensely. You know that, right? And they roll their eyes and I'm like, well, you know that, right? And I think that when they're older, I hope that they have that same kind of base or pillar of confidence that I've had my whole life.

• 12:50Speaker 01

  So, you know, just having someone in your life and every day telling them they mean a lot to you, they can't help but not believe you after a while. So I got that from my mom. I think that without that, I probably would have had, and I still have it a little bit, a sense of masculinity that was being the strong silent type. But yeah, every day I tell my kids that I just think they're wonderful and they have value.

• 13:12Ryan Hawk?

  I think that's a, an amazing form of leadership. I'll share a little bit more why. When I think about the leaders, coaches, my background's in sports, that have impacted me the most, they're the ones that made me believe I was better than I was. They're the ones that pushed me and raised my level of performance higher than I even thought I was capable of. You're a leader within your company and companies, you have been your entire career, you're a leader as a family man. Taking what you learned from your mom and her instilling that belief in you. And I sensed she truly believed it when she said that. I get that sense. I'm sure you do too, right? She's not just saying it to make you feel, but she believed it.

• 13:53Ryan Hawk?

  How do you take that, that sense of belief in somebody? And lifting them up as you lead people? Let's, let's talk business for a second. You just talked about your boys. So you do that every day with them. How about from a business perspective and instilling belief in others? Because you believe in them and you tell them that.

• 14:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm, I've gotten better at it, but I'm still not good at it. But I was bad at it when I was your age. And that is, I thought being a leader was being the smartest person in the room. And I had trouble, especially I think with other men. There's, I had this weird dynamic and I think it affects a lot of us men. That if we say to a dude, wow, you look like you're in great shape or you're ripped. You've been working out or dude, you're, God, you're handsome. Or, you know, you just handled that situation so well. It's somehow it takes away from your accomplishment or masculinity. That somehow it's a zero sum game. And where that unfortunately permeated in my professional life is you don't realize there's so much currency you have.

• 14:56Speaker 01

  If you're in a management role or a leadership role, much less a founder, you have so much currency to pull someone into a conference room and go, you were outstanding in that meeting. Or I just read this and I love this paragraph. God, where did you come up with this idea? Like you worded it so well here.

• 15:16Speaker 01

  You literally see these people just light up. If you're the founder of a company and they went to work for you, it means that they think you're impressive, whether you're impressive or not. They think you're impressive. And so what I've tried to be much better at is just a quick email saying, you handled yourself really well there. Or this is great work. And I even do it. It's funny. I've gotten to know some, mostly through the podcast, some celebrities. And occasionally, I always used to thought if you're a CEO or whatever, you get so many compliments, they don't mean anything to you. Typically, I mean, we're just as like fragile and narcissistic as anyone else. So I have a friend of mine who was in the biggest movie of last summer, and I wrote to him, I'm like, dude, you just stole the show. Your was so outstanding.

• 16:02Speaker 01

  And he just wrote back and he's like, why? Why did you think that? And thanks so much. And I would think this guy would be like fielding millions of fans. And what you realize is that no matter how famous someone is, they love affirmation as much as anybody else. And the greatest wasted resource in history is good intentions that don't get articulated, or good thoughts that don't get articulated. And then if you really want to have a big impact, especially among young people in your company, when they do something well, just calling them out, especially publicly, if you can do it, this is so good, right? Especially with young people, they need watering. It's like having a ton of capital and not spending it. And so

• 16:44Speaker 01

  the way I would say, I've always run my own companies, and I made the mistake of being a millionaire from a currency standpoint and not spending it. Because for some reason, I had some fucked up sense of insecurity or masculinity that I thought it was a zero sum game, that if I acknowledged someone else was doing a good job or was impressive, somehow that made me less impressive. And that's a mistake I made. And I think I started to figure that out and course correct around 35 or 40. But what you want in a company, just from a shareholder perspective, is the team with the best players wins. And half the battle is attracting the best players. But the other 50%, maybe even 51% is retaining them, because it's so expensive to find new good people. And loyalty is a function of compensation.

• 17:29Speaker 01

  It just is. If you appreciate people, they become loyal to you. And especially if you're good at what you do. And compensation breaks down into several things. There's obviously economic compensation. There's experience and upscaling. But also just making them feel really good and like they're appreciated. When I worked at Morgan Stanley, I remember going into my year end reviews. I had no idea. I'm not joking. I thought, okay, I could either be fired or get a 200% bonus. And I wouldn't be totally surprised here. I just have no fucking idea how I'm doing. I think I'm good at this, but you never got feedback. You know, this was 90s investment banking culture where occasionally someone threw a chair at you or made fun of you.

• 18:12Speaker 01

  You know, it just wasn't, you got no real feedback unless, I was a junior level analyst. You were sort of invisible until you fucked up. You got a lot of feedback when you fucked up. But as I've gotten older, I realized as a manager, if you aren't salting and watering young people with praise when they deserve it, and also constructive feedback when they fuck up, but feedback, positive and negative, it's incredible compensation. So whenever someone does something good, I try to memo to selfie, email. And then when I do their review at the end of the year, it's like, wow, this dude is paying attention. And that is a form of compensation. Young people, if you give them a really thoughtful review and say, you know what?

• 18:57Speaker 01

  You've been our treasurer. If you ever want to be a CFO and you want to make more money, you're a single mother. I imagine you want to make more money. You understand them, you know them, you're working. I know you need flexibility. I know you're a single mom. I imagine you want to make more money. You need to take more courses. Here are three courses at NYU Stern. This is what they cost. I'm going to pay for it, but I need you to develop skills around balance sheet accounting. I mean, that person's just going to be loyal to you. That person's going to go, okay, this person is taking an interest in me and understands me and is willing to try and guide me a little bit. My reviews used to be one thing, a check. I took the Morgan Stanley approach. I'm like, people want money. They're good, you give them 60% bonus. They're not good, you give them 30%.

• 19:40Speaker 01

  Or you give them a zero bonus, which is basically like firing them. Now I realize.

• 19:46Speaker 01

  As much feedback as possible in a thoughtful way, that is, I think, incredible compensation. And also just with, especially the young people praise, it's incredible currency, wasted currency, if you don't leverage it.

• 19:55Ryan Hawk?

  I think it also shows a very healthy culture than when it's a truth telling environment. And again, friends of mine have helped me with this, but the instant you're thinking something positively about somebody, just tell them, text them, call them, see them, say it. If you're thinking it, don't wait, just do it, just say it. Like, think about when you get those texts, when you get, like you said, this famous movie star, who you would assume, oh, he or she's good to go, they're fine, no big deal. And yet, they still feel it just like the rest of us, how good it feels when someone says, "That was awesome, I loved how you performed in that thing." I mean, to me, it's just like, oh, I'm thinking it, say it, just say it. And then you get, like, it creates this amazing dialogue and deepening of a relationship with another person. And ultimately, that's what, as you said, greatness is in the agency of others, that's

• 20:39Ryan Hawk?

  what life is really all about.

• 20:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm trying to be better at it, because I've been inspired. My, one of my closest friends, Lee Lotus, he called me, I was on, like, out of the blue, he called me and said, "I was with my uncle and my aunt, and we were watching an old episode of Bill Maher, and he's like, 'I just can't tell you how proud of you I am.'" Dudes don't speak to each other that way. He used to come over to my fraternity, and we bombed to the, to Will Rogers Beach in his 1984 Honda Civic, and we'd get ridiculously fucking high and just sit on the beach and look at the sunset, and he's like, "Did you ever think you were gonna be doing this?" He's like, "It's just so incredible." And I can't tell you how meaningful that is. It just stops you in your tracks, right?

• 21:24Speaker 01

  And so, I've tried to take a note from his playbook and reach out to people, even when you don't know them as well as you think you might need to, you know, and just say, "Wow, you're such an, you're such an impressive person, you're so good at what you do." And I'm trying to get much better at that. And you know, that, what you realize is, there's this sort of this cartoon of grandparents who are like, "Oh, you're so good at this, and, oh, you're such an impressive young woman." What you realize is, they get it, right? They've figured it out. That that's all there is. We're a species that cooperates in relationships. Your happiness is a function of your relationships.

• 22:06Speaker 01

  And so to not express affection and admiration is just like, you know, it's just this unbelievable wasted resource. So yeah, I'm glad you brought this up, but it's something, it's a reminder. I still sometimes think we have a tendency to think other people are telepathic. And then, okay, I love this person and I think they're wonderful. They must sense it. Well, no, they don't sense it. I mean, yeah, articulate it. I can guarantee that when you're on your deathbed, you're not going to think, ah, shit, I gave too much praise of work and I told too many people how much they meant to me. That's just not going to happen.

• 22:42Ryan Hawk?

  Yeah. Speaking of Bill Maher, Scott, I always kind of feel bad for the person that's sitting next to you when you're on that show and sometimes even Bill, because

• 22:50Speaker 01

  Oh, ah.

• 22:51Ryan Hawk?

  Well, no. So there's some of them where you go to full on applause after every single response or answer to a question and the other person's sitting there like they have that weird look on their face like, who is this guy? How is he like? It's funny. It's like you have this probably conversations with the people who edit your podcast where you're talking about clips, right? Because clips are such a big deal. And there are certain guests that they're just clip machines. So this is like inside baseball lingo I have with my team of people who are my clip machines. Scott Galloway is like the number one clip machine in the world. Uh, James Clear, Morgan Housel, Scott Galloway. I would say those are the people in my mind that are clip machines, which leads me to a question, Scott, and that is around becoming

• 23:33Ryan Hawk?

  an effective communicator, because leaders, this is mandatory now. I don't think this is optional to become a great storyteller, to be able to communicate ideas, to be able to inspire and move people. You are as good at this as anybody I've talked to. Um, some of it's probably you're born with it. I know you've talked about your dad was really good at this, but how can someone who isn't maybe born with as much talent or skill as you get better at becoming an effective communicator where they become clip machines essentially?

• 24:04Speaker 01

  Well, again, you're being generous about two things, Maher and then being a good storyteller. So. I have a huge ego. The Bill Maher format. I do a lot of media. I get really nervous before Bill Maher. I thought I was gonna throw up the first time.

• 24:17Ryan Hawk?

  Really?

• 24:18Speaker 01

  I thought I was gonna throw up on the desk.

• 24:19Ryan Hawk?

  It doesn't look like it.

• 24:20Speaker 01

  God, I'm so nervous on the show. My dad only watched two things on TV, Maple Leafs hockey and, and Bill Maher. So every time I'm on, I think my dad's watching and I get very nervous. And the format is pretty intense. You come out on that, you know, they roll up the desk and Bill's not afraid to get in your face. And you can say something inarticulate too bad. It's, it's a very intense environment. But it's a format that's kind of well-suited for my sort of terse comments. And I'm an egomaniac. I go on after and I see all these nice comments and it makes me feel really good. And then one time I went on with Jessica Tarlov and immediately after the show, I immediately go to YouTube to get the comments. And I hear, all I see is Jess is a superstar. Jess is amazing. And I'm like, fuck, I just got so upset.

• 25:05Ryan Hawk?

  I want to have a podcast with her now.

• 25:06Speaker 01

  I know. That's, and that's what I did. I called her and I said, I'm just so bummed out that everyone appears to love you more than me. So can we start a podcast together? And that gave rise to the Raging Moderates podcast. If I could give my kid one thing, keep in mind, 10 years ago, we were trying to get all our kids to take computer science in Mandarin. That has not worked out. But the one enduring skill I think is storytelling. Your ability to find a mate, attract friends, attract cheap capital, get people to come to work for you, invest in you, is around your ability to look at data and develop a narrative arc and then express it in a compelling way. And I don't know if it's 49 or 51% nature versus nurture or genetics versus practice.

• 25:49Speaker 01

  But I have an unfair advantage because for 22 years, I've stood in front of 160 fairly discriminating people who are paying a lot of money. And I have to tell them a story for 80 minutes non-stop and it has to be worth, it's 160 kids. You know, they're basically paying like $130,000 in tuition just for that one night. So you can't just show up and tell war stories. So you have to be an effective communicator. I got a lot of practice. I've taught 4,500 students over 22 years. I get a ton of practice telling stories and obviously podcasting. If you want to be an effective storyteller, I would say the one basic, the stem of storytelling is the ability to write well. I think it forces you to manage your thoughts, think things through.

• 26:32Speaker 01

  So I think it's difficult to be a great storyteller if you can't write at a competent level. Now, in terms of developing those skills, what I would suggest is look at every medium, whether it's texting, LinkedIn, short form video, TikTok, long form writing, magazine article like writing, writing books, speaking, small groups. Go through every medium and rank yourself and listen to yourself and decide what is my specialty and then go very deep around one and say, I am really good. I'm good speaking in front of groups. I'm not great one-on-one. I come across as aloof and insecure at the same time when I meet with people one-on-one. I'm just not, I'm not that effective.

• 27:12Ryan Hawk?

  Are you sure that's true?

• 27:14Speaker 01

  I'm not strong. I'm much better. In front of a group of a thousand people, I'm charming and likeable and I don't think I'm either of those things one-on-one. I think people are generally disappointed at the downside when they meet me in small groups. I think I'm going to be much more interesting than I am. And then I'm not good on the phone. I've listened to myself on the phone. I'm not, I'm not very good on the phone. Figure out your medium. There are so many different mediums. Figure out what you're great at. It might be podcasting. Some people give, you know, I say they give great text, whatever it is. Are you a visual storyteller? And commit to being in the top 1%. So in my class, I say, pick a social media platform. I don't care if it's LinkedIn or TikTok. Find out what you need to be in the top 1%. And I say, by the end of the semester, you need

• 27:56Speaker 01

  to be in the top 1%. And a lot of people pick LinkedIn and say, I need to come up with a very niche content business strategy for producing content and we track it. So it's developing a platform. In this resistance unsubscribe, I did the analysis to, I'm getting about 60 to 100,000 uniques a day. To do that from a standing start, I would have to invest 4 to 8 million dollars in keywords. So the ability to build your platforms by understanding storytelling and more specifically, what type of storytelling resonates by the medium is an unbelievable asset. I think if you're a young person, you want to be influential or economically secure, social media may make you want to shower after you use it. It has been bad for my mental health. But in terms of economic power and influence,

• 28:39Speaker 01

  it's frightening how powerful social is right now. So. Rank every different medium you participate in, where you have skills, and then identify and challenge yourself to be in the top 10% within a year and the top 1% within three years. You're in the top 1% of podcasts, or 1.6 million podcasts, 600,000 put out content every week. If you're in the top 6,000, you're in the top 1%, you're probably the top 0.1%. So it makes sense for you to go very deep around podcasting, to invest in audio quality producers and say, okay, if I can be in the top 0.1% of storytelling in this medium, podcasting, I can make a good living and have a lot of influence. And then also around storytelling, the reality is

• 29:21Speaker 01

  your efforts are going to be inversely correlated to the size of the screen. And that is, if you're a great storyteller and you think I want to tell, I want to make documentary films, you don't need to be in the 0.1%, you need to be in the 0.01%. The big screen is returning terrible, or terribly, I should say. TV, still a huge business, but it's kind of flat. But if you can produce content that is mostly digested off of a phone, whether it's a podcast or a short-form video, that's champagne and cocaine. So that's the overlay. But if I could give my kids any one skill that I think is going to be enduring, it would be storytelling. And that's what I do. My, my core competence is storytelling. My superpower is attracting, retaining people that help leverage my skills.

• 30:05Speaker 01

  But yeah, it's kind of everything.

• 30:07Ryan Hawk?

  You mentioned resist and unsubscribe. I think a lot of people, when we initially heard this, thought like, really? Like, Scott, this seems rather ambitious. Is it even going to make a dent? I don't know. Like, there's a lot of cynics out there and you've stayed strong. It seems like it's making a big impact. But can you describe what is it, what it is, why you want to do? Because you could focus on anything and you're focusing a lot on this. Yeah, I would, I'd just love to hear what brought you to this point, how it's going and what you, how you want it to go on beyond February.

• 30:40Speaker 01

  I've typically been able to disassociate from politics. And when I saw Secretary Noem describe Alex Prady, an ICU nurse taking care of veterans, as a domestic terrorist and say he was brandishing a weapon with intent to massacre federal agents, it really rattled me. And Dan Harris from 10% Happier has this great saying that action absorbs anxiety. And I thought, okay, I'm sick of being so virtuous and action, you know, and courageous on a keyboard or a mic. I need to do something. And I think I understand the markets and economics and I thought what people don't realize is they have this weapon hiding in plain sight and that is their spend or lack thereof. And that is the most radical act in a capitalist society is non-participation.

• 31:20Speaker 01

  And that is if you look back to when the government most quickly responded and the scale of its response, it was six years ago when it flushed trillions of dollars in the economy and changed laws, not because 10 of thousands of people were dying from COVID, but because the GDP crashed 31%. And if you look at when the president backs away from plans to annex Greenland or what feel like irrational tariffs, it's when either the bond market or the stock market goes downside that, okay, how do you send a signal to be the market? 40% of the S and P is now determined by just 10 companies and those 10 companies, the soft issue there is they are especially sensitive to subscription growth or lack thereof. So I said, all right, we have a weapon hiding in plain sight and that is you can get maximum

• 32:04Speaker 01

  leverage or impact with a minimal amount of consumer disruption by unsubscribing. So for example, if you unsubscribe from the paid version of ChatGPT, which is $240, they're raising money at 40 times revenue, that's a $10,000 hit to their market cap. So what I'm trying to do is send a signal to Americans that maybe you don't need three streaming media music companies. If you like me, you go onto AT&T's site, you might find that you have four AT&T contracts, three of which which are for Blackberries and iPads that have been in landfills for eight years. And that if enough people send a signal, even if it has a minimal, minimal impact on the subscription growth of these companies or gain some attention from media platforms such as this one, I want to create an incentive structure that's more balanced.

• 32:49Speaker 01

  I think these companies have figured or determined that the incentive structure is to enable the president, keep quiet, and he will give you passes from tariffs, enable you, maybe even provide debt financing for your data centers, whatever it might be. But I think at a minimum, I want to create an incentive structure that says there is a downside to enabling the president when you yourself are texting people like me saying you hate yourself. So, well, that's not doing, that's a lot of good. So the idea is how do you have maximum impact with a minimal amount of consumer disruption? It is, I want to be clear, it's, you know, kind of one bite at a time. I don't think I have changed

• 33:30Speaker 01

  the behavior of any of these companies, but I've heard from probably 20% of the CEOs. And just as an analogy, the most famous economic strike, I believe in the US was the Montgomery Bus Strike. And there was a cinematic moment that people remember where a brave young woman refused to give up her seat. But actually, what fomented change was an 11-month carpooling effort organized by Dr. King, where thousands of carpools shuttled people to work. And the municipal bus system was losing a quarter of a million dollars a month. And after 11 months, they decided to change or desegregate their bus system. So I wanted to do something. I wanted to send a signal. I wanted to try and change incentive structure. I think we've

• 34:11Speaker 01

  accomplished the first. I don't think we've accomplished the second. But at a minimum, it feels really good to be doing something with other people. We'll end up with probably 2 million unique visitors to the site. As you probably know, I've been just a total media whore. We've been everywhere. And, you know, I like to think we're having an impact. And even if it's just a gnat on an elephant, enough gnats will take down an elephant.

• 34:36Ryan Hawk?

  What's it look like moving forward?

• 34:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a really good question, Ryan. And I'm very open to ideas. It's taken a lot of my time. And I thought, okay, it was meant to be just for February, but it feels like it's building momentum. And so I don't know if I evolve it, like, you know, make it like meta-march, or, you know, focus on a smaller group of companies for March, or I just keep it going. Or I say, I'm going to leave the site up. Here's links to make it easy to unsubscribe. And I pull back from it and maybe empower some other people or some other resistance sites. There's a bunch of them out there. So I'm trying to work through that. But I just agreed to do an event in Minneapolis called the Resistant Unsubscribe Event, where we'll sell out the Pantages Theatre there and probably get 1,000 or 1,200 people.

• 35:20Speaker 01

  So, you know, the reality is, I'm not, I'm not entirely sure what to do. We've established a lot of momentum.

• 35:26Ryan Hawk?

  I'm curious how it affects you, actually, because you've openly stated how it's created, I think, a lot of people online to say bad things about you. And maybe you've done a good job of not looking at those things. I know that's hard to do. That's what I was curious about is would you have to hand something like this off even though you're the reason that it's gained momentum because of whether it's the CEOs of these, these powerful people, these billionaires or whoever. Now you get invited to those events. And I know you've gone to some of them, like I think you call them the masters of the universe events. I wondered how it's affecting you in those rooms with some of those people where they're like, Scott, you're one of us. Like, what are you doing, dude? Let somebody else do

• 36:11Ryan Hawk?

  that. How has that been for you?

• 36:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, so first off, there is no battle without casualties. And on the whole, it's been, I think, positive for me emotionally. It feels good to do something. I was in Switzerland last week and I had, on average, two or three people a day come up to me and fist bump me or high five me and say, resist and unsubscribe.

• 36:34Ryan Hawk?

  Wow.

• 36:35Speaker 01

  I've gotten a lot of positive feedback from people. I've had two speaking gigs canceled. And they said, it's not because we don't agree. It's just you're sort of politically hot. I had the largest software company in the firm headquartered in Seattle, which will go nameless, call me this morning and say, they spend about three quarters of a million dollars either each quarter or each six months on my podcast, say, we're going to wait and see, we're going to pause the campaign and see what you're doing in March, which to me is basically saying, look, boss. I get it. That's the right. They get to advertise or not advertise. But I just saw that blatantly as them saying, look, we're not going to advertise if you continue

• 37:17Speaker 01

  to try and encourage people to unsubscribe. So, look, nothing's for free. But one of my role models is Sam Harris, and he has this great saying that comforts me. And that is, if you have economic security and people who love you unconditionally, and I have both those things, then you have an obligation to speak out and speak your mind because most people don't have that luxury. I believe what's going on here in our government is wrong. I want to do something more than just vote or even go to a protest. I feel like I'm in a position on my platform to make a difference. And if I lose some speaking gigs or some of the people who I hang out with, I don't get invited to their dinner parties or they call me and kind of read me the riot act, although most

• 37:58Speaker 01

  call me and say, I've heard from about 20% of the CEOs, they'll call and say the following, we get what you're doing. You got to understand it's difficult for us to go first. We have an obligation to shareholder value. I mean, they're very smooth. They're not threatening. We're drawing advertising as sort of a, call it a passive aggressive threat. I understand though, that they're like, why are we financing this effort? But I would say on the whole, it feels really good to be doing something, Ryan. I mean, and the downside, you know, I went on Pierce Morgan the other night and they had a MAGA guy, I forget his name, saying, you're being unpatriotic and desperate. Like it's pathetic what you're doing. And you run the risk of public failure and embarrassment if you throw a party and no

• 38:42Speaker 01

  one shows up or you lose all your advertisers, that would be bad. But, you know, my attitude now, and it goes back to time, is I'm going to be dead soon. Is this all going really fast? Am I going to look back and think, oh, fuck, I lost Microsoft as a sponsor? Or some people on the right thought this was stupid and unpatriotic and other people thought it was kind of like roll their eyes or that it was, you know, kind of a waste? Or am I going to think, you know, right on, I tried to do something. I think it's going to be the latter. I want to, I want to show up with a carpool and try and make a difference. And whether it's I'm showing up on a moped or I'm showing up with a tractor trailer,

• 39:24Speaker 01

  depending on the success of this movement, I want to be that guy. I want to be someone who was unafraid. You know, some of my heroes, whether it's Hillary Clinton or Muhammad Ali, or the people I admire, I was just at a, this is going to sound douchey, I was at a restaurant, Opry Ski and, you know, Life of Privilege. This couple, they obviously fucked up. They got up and they started dancing. In a place that's, there's a ton of alcohol and people start dancing on tables and they dance as if no one is watching. That's how I want to live my life. I want to be a little fucked up and I want to dance like no one is watching. Like, okay, if you're sober, you're like, oh, those people look ridiculous be dancing. I'm telling you, you know, you know what? They're just like really enjoying life and doing what they want to do.

• 40:10Speaker 01

  I want to live life that way. I want to, if I make some mistakes, I lose some money. So be it. I want to be that guy that was like, yeah, I was like ready, fire, fucking aim on this thing called life.

• 40:22Ryan Hawk?

  It's like a closer, but I do have a few more questions. One of them that I've heard you talk about recently, it's really cool to see what's going on with Prof G markets and how it's gone from nothing to now it feels like a really big time thing. You and Ed talked about that you were going to like, try to get Prof G, the media company, built up so you could sell it for potentially hundreds of millions of dollars. And I thought that's kind of weird because Prof G is you. Why would you want to do that? Why wouldn't you want to keep it as your kind of megaphone? You're, you built this amazing platform. Why would you want to sell something like that?

• 41:01Speaker 01

  Uh, one of my capitalists, I'm insecure about money and I'm always looking for another exit. I try to be very transparent about my ambitions.

• 41:09Ryan Hawk?

  I know I've heard you say that before, but that still surprises me because then what? You've built this thing that's your microphone from, from nothing. You know, the first time we recorded, you, you had not had that yet. And now you have something that's potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars just basically from you talking into a microphone and on stages and writing books and all that other stuff. YouTube videos, whatever. You've won, you've kind of won. Why the need for another cash out when you've already cashed out tons?

• 41:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it's a couple of things. One, I'm just wired that way where I want to have enterprise value and build value. And, and even if I end up, I'm at a point now, I hear, I think we've talked about it. I hit my number seven, 10 years ago now, and I, I, every year I look at how much money I have above that and I either spend it or I give it away. So the money isn't profound for me. It's still meaningful because I still have economic security, even though unless I really fuck up, I'll be fine. But in order to scale, I think businesses are like sharks. If they're not moving forward and growing, they're dying. And also, the key to building a big business, the team of the best players wins. The only way, at least for me, I've been able to find really talented people and get them to act like owners is to make them owners. So I give equity away.

• 42:21Speaker 01

  I've never sold a company owning more than, you know, I usually give away between 30% or 40% and 70% of the company. And what I do is I sit down the people, especially the really talented ones, and you spot them. This is politically incorrect, but I think 10% of your employees add 120% of the value and the other 90% are negative 20. That's not to say you don't need them, but in every organization, there are just some people who are driving just so much value. And what I do is I sit them down and I say, okay, this is the company. This is how we're going to build it together. And I'm going to give you 3% of the company or 5% of the company. I'm going to sell it for three to six times revenues, which means you're going to get this much money. And I have a history of getting these things to exits. I find that is the only way to really hold on to outstanding

• 43:05Speaker 01

  people. And I think one of the mistakes that founders make is like, I'm making a shit ton of money, I have a nice life, and this is fun for you, so you're going to be fine. No, young people, especially the young people I try to attract, they have the same ambitious goals around economic security that you have. It's like, well, Scott, you're not the only person that wants to fly private someday. You're not the only person that wants to give away a bunch of money to philanthropy. You know, I do too. And so what I do is I say, okay, and by the way, what you described was the first three or four years of the business. I thought it was done, a fun thing, maybe a little bit of influence, maybe a nice living, run my life still through the expenses, just sort of a nice little business.

• 43:46Speaker 01

  And then it started scaling more right place, right time than anything because podcasting has taken off. So to create enterprise value, I have to create voices other than mine. So China Decode, I'm not on it. Prop G Market, I'm on one day a week, even though it's five days a week. Raging Moderates is going to five days a week, I'll be on two of the five. So I'm trying to diversify a little bit away from SCAD where like I'll be able to point to 60 or 70% of the revenue I will not touch. And then we'll probably launch another one or two podcasts in the next 12 months. But I think it is very difficult to retain really talented young people without the prospect of an exit that will build

• 44:30Speaker 01

  real economic value for them. Also, I just enjoy it. I think I'm good at it. I've had a few exits. I find it fascinating. I want to go after CNBC. I think we're going to be 80% of NBC with 10% of the means of production costs. We now have bigger audiences than them in the core demographic because it's basically their average viewership, I think, is 67. Our average viewership is age 34, and that's who advertisers want to reach. So I'm very focused on how to create enterprise value and create something that's saleable. Now, if I sell it, let's be honest, that doesn't mean anyone's going anywhere. No one's going to buy us and give us a bunch of money just for a bunch of mics and production equipment. We're all going to have to sign four or five year agreements. And that's

• 45:13Speaker 01

  been the way at almost every firm I've sold. But I'm very focused on enterprise value. I want, I want to enjoy myself and I want to create economic security for other people at this point. So I am very focused on, on enterprise value. I don't want to have a company where people come in, work for two years and then go somewhere else. I want to have a place where I can find super talented people and say to them, okay, this is how I'm going to make you a millionaire in the next four years.

• 45:36Ryan Hawk?

  It makes a lot of sense, especially around attracting people that are very, very talented, the young ones who you want to have like, oh, they have big upside. They have lottery tickets that they're investing in. One of the other things that came up recently is, I thought of this Deion Sanders quote, and I think it applies, but he said, look good, feel good. Feel good, play good. Play good, pay good. You've been open about getting cosmetic surgery recently. And I don't know any guys who are open about that. Literally, I don't know any. You're the first one. And you're on camera all the time. One, what made you want to do that? And why be so open about it?

• 46:19Speaker 01

  I regret being open about it because it's become a meme online and it's a bit embarrassing.

• 46:23Ryan Hawk?

  Has it?

• 46:24Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, people in my comments, I don't know. I try to live my life transparently. That's probably, that was probably too much information. But basically I have pretty serious dark circles around my eyes. And as someone who's always had a little bit of body dysmorphia, it became something I could, the only thing I could see when I was on TV.

• 46:42Ryan Hawk?

  Yep.

• 46:43Speaker 01

  I decided to get it fixed, but yeah, and I talked very openly about it. I would bet within 10 years, 50% of men over the age of 50 have money, we're gonna have shit done.

• 46:53Ryan Hawk?

  Absolutely. I don't blame anybody, guy, girl. You have to look at that person every single day, multiple times. If you don't feel good about it, or there's something, maybe a small thing that you don't feel good about, why not? Like, why not?

• 47:08Speaker 01

  I don't regret it. Like, it just, I'm not sure I should have been as open about it. But yeah, I did it. It was pretty easy. And I would say to anybody, you know, do what makes you feel good about yourself. And also, it's not, it's not easy being mediocre looking. It takes real effort. Yeah, I also think I probably suffer a little bit from, I grew up very, very skinny with bad acne. I think maybe I'm a little too focused or a little too self-conscious about my looks. And I, I really feel for young women in the age of Instagram. I just can't imagine how they're not obsessed with their looks. Cause the benchmark just keeps getting higher and higher and more unreasonable.

• 47:48Ryan Hawk?

  I do think though, you've said this, but America and maybe the world is ageist and lookist. You can act like that's bad to say, and it's not correct, but it's true. It just is, especially if you're gonna be on stages and on TV and on video all the time. If you look old or out of shape, again, this sounds terrible, but I, I think people will start hiring other people. Unless you're just remarkably, remarkably talented as a storyteller, so you'd still probably have a shot. But I, I just think that's the reality of the world we live in.

• 48:20Speaker 01

  We don't want to talk about it. Like, New York is the ultimate tip of the spear for a capitalist society. And it's optimized for two people. Hot women and rich guys. For everyone else, it's a soul-crushing experience. And we can talk about the way the world should be and the way the world is. That's the way the world is. And it's a little less awful in the corporate world and in other parts of the world, because they're not as lookist or as ageist. But, you know, I coach a lot of young men. I'm like, start working out. A, it's just good for your head. Women and employers are attracted to big muscles, or a guy who's in shape, or someone who's in shape, not because it looks good, which it does, but because it reflects that you show up, that you have discipline, that you can commit

• 48:58Speaker 01

  to something. And we live in an age now where there's just so much emphasis in so many unreasonable expectations, and we're, we're really ageist. My last company was an analytics company, and I hired a developer who was maybe forty-seven, forty-eight, and most of my developers were in their twenties. And it was such a weird vibe. He'd be in a meeting, and it was this, I sensed like all the other young people were like, dude, what happened? What, you're not running a tech company, by the way? Like, what happened? Like, oh, you know, to be that age and not be in charge of everything was, you know, you had fucked up, if you will. Look, there's a way the world should be, there's a way the world is, and I think you do the

• 49:40Speaker 01

  best with what you have. I think it's super important. I coach a lot of young men, and I have something called the rule of threes. I hate, and I'm venturing into other waters here, I hate the incel movement. Because if you look throughout history, through ninety-nine percent of men, through ninety-nine percent of history have been involuntarily celibate. There's very few things any man in the world right now would rather be doing than having sex. And women have a much finer filter for mates than men. So throughout history, only forty percent of men have reproduced eighty percent of women. So it's like, okay, welcome to the human species, where the majority of us are involuntarily celibate. It's better in the America, in Western Europe and America, seventy-five percent of men get an opportunity

• 50:22Speaker 01

  to reproduce. But I hate this movement where you just sort of resign yourself to, well, it's women's fault, they're choosier, and it's like a badge of honor, I just, I'm involuntarily celibate. Oh, fuck that. You're a V-cel, you're voluntarily celibate. And what I say is the rule of threes. If you work out three times a week or more, if you spend at least thirty hours a week working outside of the house, and you put yourself in the company of strangers, working on the agency of something bigger than yourself, church group, nonprofit, sports league, whatever it might be, just by doing those three things, you put yourself in the top five percent. Of attractiveness of young males. And if you're in the top 5% for long enough and you develop the skills to approach people

• 51:05Speaker 01

  and express friendship and romantic interest while making them feel safe. And most importantly, you get used to no. Anyone who's had great yeses has had a shit ton of no's. There were hundreds of no's for you to get to a top podcast, right? My guess is you probably have a great partner. That involved a lot of no's along the way. You get used to know. If you can be in the top 5% and learn how to mourn and move on from rejection. At some point, I tell this to the young men I mentor, you will be voluntarily incel a bit, which is fucking awesome. So all these men claiming to be incels, no, you have given up. You're lazy, you're full of shit. You're voluntarily celibate and welcome to the fucking work week, boss. We all had to work hard to find good jobs. No one has the right to a living.

• 51:50Speaker 01

  No one has the right to reproduce. If you want to score above your class economically or romantically, well, then get out a big spoon and get ready to eat shit. It's what every one of us has done. And for some reason, you've decided to like blame the world or immigrants or women for your economic or romantic problems? Fuck that. Level up.

• 52:09Ryan Hawk?

  One more question. Love it. This is the champagne question from my friend, Jason Gainard. Scott, we're meeting a year from right now, one year. Or you're with, let's say you're with your boys and your wife and you're celebrating, you're popping bottles, you got champagne everywhere. It's going crazy. What are you celebrating?

• 52:28Speaker 01

  God, so funny. Two things immediately popped into my mind. My son just got into college and I'm just constantly worried about my boys, Ryan. I didn't worry about them when they were little unless they were sick. They were just safe and they were home. And now I'm just worried about them all the time. I'm just, are they doing okay at school? One's quiet, is he okay? I, I don't know if it's them or I'm just getting more anxious as I get older. But my kid just got into a fantastic university. We're so proud of him. I'd be celebrating his first year, having fun, good friend group, couple of dates, got his heart broken, maybe broke someone's heart, went to a bunch of football games and was gearing up for his sophomore year.

• 53:10Speaker 01

  That to me would just be incredible victory. And then two, to be blunt. I'm very focused on Democrats taking back control of Congress. I'm going to spend a lot of my time, treasure and talent. I'm moving back to the US because I want to be quote unquote, "part of the resistance." I'm very upset about the state of America right now, and I would imagine a lot of your listeners don't agree with me, but I feel as if everything that got me, or almost everything that got, you know, it's easy to credit your grit and your character for your success, but as you get older, you get more thoughtful. And as we've referenced earlier in the show, I reverse engineer to government programs, respect for immigrants, immigrants built my companies, massive investment in technologies, competitive markets where the government

• 53:54Speaker 01

  didn't weigh in and pick winners and losers, assisted lunch. My mom, I speak openly about this, when I was 17 and I got into UCLA, it was just me and my mom, my mom terminated a pregnancy. And if we'd lived somewhere in the South and she'd been forced to carry a baby to term, I wouldn't have been able to go to college. I would have had to support my mom and a newborn. So all of these things that put me in this seat with you here now, I feel like a lot of them are under attack, and I find it very rattling. And I also think men my age, I'm older than you, but if you're a white heterosexual male born in the 60s, you've had unfair prosperity, you've had unearned advantage. I've had literally fucking hurricane winds in my sails. I got to go to UCLA when it had a 74% admissions rate.

• 54:36Speaker 01

  I got undergrad and grad, seven years of college for $7,000 in tuition. I got into Berkeley Graduate School with an undergraduate GPA of 2.27 GPA. You're talking about a different time. I have raised hundreds of millions of dollars in capital because of these deep, deep capital pools because of rule of law and fair competition and not the government weighing in and deciding who should get to acquire Warner Brothers or who didn't. As I said, immigrants built all my companies, you know, best people in my companies from Canada, from Afghanistan.

• 55:08Speaker 01

  From Argentina, I feel like everything that got me here to this point today is under attack and that I have, and I think if you're a man my age who has had not been called to serve in Vietnam, this is basically the story of my life as it relates to America. Unprecedented historic prosperity with the lowest taxes in history. That describes my relationship with America. So I have a debt. And so I want to get very involved in restoring what I think of the traditional values. It gave me so much prosperity or to summarize, I want to make America, America again. And so for me, it would be celebrating my boy's freshman year at college and the Democrats taking back control of Congress.

• 55:53Ryan Hawk?

  I think the overwhelming number of people in America, Scott, are independent. They're raging moderates.

• 56:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:04Ryan Hawk?

  I really do.

• 56:05Speaker 01

  Show me a moderate Republican, I'll give money.

• 56:07Ryan Hawk?

  Yeah, I like the Talaricos of the world. I mean, I just think so many are in that boat and so they're kind of homeless.

• 56:15Speaker 01

  We're probably going to lurch to the left, unfortunately, but anyways.

• 56:18Ryan Hawk?

  Yeah, but my point is just like, I think, what do people want? I think they just want reasonable people.

• 56:24Speaker 01

  Hundred percent.

• 56:25Ryan Hawk?

  That's what we want, right? We want someone who's just reasonable. Yeah, I honestly don't care what letter is by somebody's name. I would just like someone to be.

• 56:34Speaker 01

  Oh, Mitt Romney and George Bush seem really like. Well, right now. I mean, I'm a hardcore Democrat and I look back and I'm like, yeah, I'd be fine with Mitt Romney. I have no, you know, W like probably the worst decision of the 21st century going to Iraq, but other than that, I'm a pretty good guy, pretty reasonable.

• 56:49Ryan Hawk?

  Yeah.

• 56:50Speaker 01

  And, you know, I'm almost as unpopular on the far left as I am on the far right. The far right thinks I'm a libtard, the far left thinks I'm a apostate. And to your point, unless we have real structural reform around gerrymandering or Citizens United, we're just going to end up with extremists on the left.

• 57:04Ryan Hawk?

  I didn't tee you off at that question was coming, but I love that your first thought too was, was about your family. I think that's really cool. That makes me feel good. Scott, where would you send my viewers, listeners to learn more about you online?

• 57:16Speaker 01

  Fuck Ryan, I'm everywhere. It's more where can we send him to avoid me? I'm like AOL in the 90s. You stick your hand in a cereal box, you're gonna pull out an AOL disk. I'm everywhere. I, Prof Galloway, my newsletter, all my podcasts. To resist is futile. I'm overexposed at this point.

• 57:33Ryan Hawk?

  Well, thank you for choosing to do this one again. Fourth time, I want to keep doing it, man, because like I said-

• 57:38Speaker 01

  I got a jacket on number five. What happens on-

• 57:41Ryan Hawk?

  Yeah, whatever you want. Can we do it in person? Where are you gonna be? Where are you gonna be? In Florida, New York? Where are you gonna be?

• 57:47Speaker 01

  Where are you?

• 57:47Ryan Hawk?

  I'm in Ohio. I can, I travel wherever though.

• 57:49Speaker 01

  Ohio, where in Ohio?

• 57:51Ryan Hawk?

  Dayton. You, you lived in Columbus for a little bit, right?

• 57:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, Worthington. I caddied at Worthington Country Club.

• 57:56Ryan Hawk?

  Yeah, I was just there last night with my brother. That's where he lives. So I go there quite a bit. Yeah.

• 58:00Speaker 01

  I totally see you running for office in Ohio.

• 58:02Ryan Hawk?

  No, no, no chess.

• 58:04Speaker 01

  Center right. Center right, Ryan. That's my sense of you.

• 58:07Ryan Hawk?

  Why do you say that?

• 58:08Speaker 01

  You just strike me as a reasonable guy, a moderate, but you pay sports. I don't know, I'm making a lot of stereotypes right now. I would think you're sort of, I, again, my guess would be you're center right. I just think of Ohio, Family Guy, learning leader. I don't know. You tell me. Where are you on the political spectrum?

• 58:23Ryan Hawk?

  I don't even know. That's why I said pretty homeless, pretty, pretty independent. I think if you actually think for yourself about every single issue, there is no chance you can be one or the other. That's why I don't understand the far ends of it. And when I see that you get hated on by both sides, that's when you know you're probably an independent thinker.

• 58:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, 100%. Do you go to South by Southwest?

• 58:42Ryan Hawk?

  No, I've never been. I know you and Kara are going, right? Or your whole team is going.

• 58:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, my whole team's going. If you ever want to go, I can, I can figure that out. But yeah, you'd love that. They would love you. Yeah.

• 58:51Ryan Hawk?

  Yeah, I love Austin. I think Austin's fun.

• 58:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is great.

• 58:54Ryan Hawk?

  Awesome. Well, thank you. Yeah, next time I'd love to do it in person. Wherever you end up, are you gonna move back to Florida?

• 58:59Speaker 01

  We'll probably split time between Florida and New York. It depends where my kid gets into school, you know. It's, I found out it's harder to get your kid into a high school now than it is into-

• 59:07Ryan Hawk?

  Oh, your younger one?

• 59:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I have a, I have a 15 year old. So now we gotta- Start worrying about him. It never ends. How old are yours? You got a gaggle, right?

• 59:16Ryan Hawk?

  Yeah, I do. We have five. Our oldest is 19, our youngest is 11. So all the college stuff. Yeah, it's a lot. It's a lot.

• 59:24Speaker 01

  Did it work out in terms of the college stuff?

• 59:26Ryan Hawk?

  It has. You know what? I played sports, so like I didn't really do college visits. So I just like met with the head football coach and yeah, I like that offense. And so that's why I went to the place where I went.

• 59:35Speaker 01

  Where'd you go to school?

• 59:36Ryan Hawk?

  So I originally went to Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, and I finished my career at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio. It's Mid-American Conference. So, you know, very average career, but it was fun. But now I've won on actual college visits with my daughters and I'm like, this is great. You know, University of Tennessee was fun. Ohio State, where one of ours is going to go. It's like, these are so much fun. I was impressed. I loved it. I missed out on that because of sports, not that I would have ever traded that for anything, but fortunately the process has been, has been great. I know you went like on a tour with your older one. I remember hearing about, and it sounds like you guys bonded over the, over those, those trips.

• 1:00:11Speaker 01

  It's great. America does a small number of things really well. Technology, movies with men in capes and tights. We make the best weapons in the world. And hands down, the American university experience land grand fraternity sororities fallies football games is singular. And I would say this to everyone, it's a story of privilege, but you have the opportunity to do a college show with your kids. It's a gift. It is so much fun. And like you said, it's going to make you want to go back.

• 1:00:37Ryan Hawk?

  My tour guide from the University of Tennessee, I've literally tried to hire this guy. He's a student body president of the whole school or whatever he's in. And I was blown away by how good, he was funny, you know, perfect timing.

• 1:00:49Speaker 01

  Exceptionally high EQ ethnically ambiguous kids.

• 1:00:52Ryan Hawk?

  It's exactly what it was. Yeah. I was like, this guy's awesome. My daughter's like, she's getting embarrassed. I'm like, what do you mean? He's great. You, right? You want to find exceptional people and like find a way to get them to work with you. That's really the whole game of life and building a business. So anyway, this is awesome, man. I really appreciate it and look forward to the next one for sure.

• 1:01:10Speaker 01

  Thanks, Ryan. Congrats on all your success.

• 1:01:15Ryan Hawk?

  It is the end of the Podcast Club. Thank you for being a member of the End of the Podcast Club. If you are, send me a note, [email protected]. Let me know what you learned from this great conversation with Scott Galloway. A few takeaways from my notes. Slow time down deliberately. Scott talked about how he's become more intentional about creating novel experiences as a way to make life feel richer and longer. The research backs this up. Action we all can take. Put one new experience on your calendar this month. It doesn't have to be a big thing, maybe a new

• 1:01:55Ryan Hawk?

  place, new people, new skill. The goal is novelty and trying to create as many of those novel experiences as possible. Next, see it, say it, say the thing now. Whether it's appreciation or a hard truth, people appreciate you letting them know where they stand. When you're thinking something great about someone, tell them immediately. Text them, call them, write them a note, say it to them in person. If something needs to be said, the best time to say it is now. I hadn't heard this quote before, but it makes a lot of sense. Action absorbs anxiety. Scott said it simply, and

• 1:02:37Ryan Hawk?

  I think it's one of the more portable takeaways from this entire conversation. When you feel stuck, you don't need a better plan. You need to move. Do one thing today that you've been postponing, and notice what happens to how you feel afterward. Once again, I would say thank you so much for continuing to spread the message and telling a friend or two. Hey, you should listen to this episode of The Learning Leader Show with Scott Galloway. I think he'll help you become a more effective leader because you continue to do that, and you also go to Spotify and Apple Podcasts, and you subscribe to the show, and you rate it, hopefully five stars, and you leave a thoughtful review by doing all of that. You are giving me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis, and for that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you so, so much. Talk to you soon. Can't wait.