Scott Galloway: Stop Chasing Passion and Build a Career That Pays Off | Career | YAPClassic

Scott Galloway’s definition of success changed the moment his mother became seriously ill. As a young adult, he was forced to confront an uncomfortable truth: he was immature, unfocused, and financially unprepared. That wake-up call pushed him to take work, discipline, and economic security seriously. In this episode, Scott shares his algebra of wealth, his views on work-life balance, and the habits he believes help young professionals build stronger careers, greater stability, and better relationships. In this episode, Hala and Scott will discuss: (00:00) Introduction (00:52) His Childhood Experiences and Lessons (03:04) How College Shaped His Success (08:34) The Algebra of Wealth (12:17) The Crisis That Changed Scott's Life (25:31) Balancing Career, Love, and Fitness (31:05) Why Young People Are Falling Behind (39:45) Modern Marriage and the Loneliness Crisis (50:55) Rethinking Masculinity and Modern Dating (1:00:15) Scott's Best Advice for Success Scott Galloway is an entrepreneur, a professor of marketing at the New York University Stern School of Business, a public speaker, and host of the Prof G Pod. He is the author of multiple New York Times bestselling books, including Adrift. Scott is known for his sharp insights on business, career growth, wealth, masculinity, and modern society. Sponsored By: Huel - Get over $50 in savings with the Discovery Bundle from Huel. Use my exclusive code YAP15 for 15% off at huel.com/yap15. Indeed - Get a $75 sponsored job credit to boost your job's visibility at Indeed.com/profiting Shopify - Start your $1/month trial at Shopify.com/profiting. Quo - Run your business communications the smart way. Try Quo for free, plus get 20% off your first 6 months when you go to quo.com/profiting Experian - Manage and cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reduce your bills. Get started now with the Experian App and let your Big Financial Friend do the work for you. See experian.com for details. Intuit - Start paying bills the smart way, not the hard way. Learn more at QuickBooks.com/billpay AT&T Business - Power your small business with reliable connectivity from AT&T. Switch today at business.att.com. Fabric - Protect your family with term life insurance from Fabric by Gerber Life. Apply today in just minutes at meetfabric.com/profiting ZocDoc - Stop putting off those doctors’ appointments. Find and instantly book a doctor you love today at Zocdoc.com/PROFITING Blinkist - Turn the world’s best nonfiction books into quick 15-minute reads or listens. Grab your free trial plus an exclusive 30% discount at blinkist.com/profiting Resources Mentioned: Scott’s Book, Adrift: bit.ly/SG-Adrift Scott’s Book, The Algebra of Wealth: bit.ly/SG-TAOF Scott’s Newsletter, No Mercy No Malice: bit.ly/SG-NMNL Scott’s Podcast, Prof G Pod: bit.ly/TPGP-apple Scott on Twitter: x.com/profgalloway Scott’s YouTube: bit.ly/SG-YouTub YAP E192 with Arthur Brooks: youngandprofiting.co/E192-apple YAP E189 with Daniel Pink: youngandprofiting.co/DP-E189 Active Deals - youngandprofiting.com/deals Key YAP Links Reviews - ratethispodcast.com/yap YouTube - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting Newsletter - youngandprofiting.co/newsletter LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala/ Social + Podcast Services: yapmedia.com Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com/episodes-new Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurship Podcast, Business, Business Podcast, Self Improvement, Self-Improvement, Personal Development, Starting a Business, Strategy, Investing, Sales, Selling, Psychology, Productivity, Entrepreneurs, AI, Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Marketing, Negotiation, Money, Finance, Side Hustle, Startup, Mental Health, Career, Leadership, Mindset, Health, Growth Mindset, Startup, Business Ideas, Growth Hacks, Career Development, Money Management, Opportunities, Workplace, Career Podcast

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

• 0:00Hala Taha?

  Today's episode is sponsored in part by Northwest Registered Agent, Whatnot, Mod, and AG1. Northwest Registered Agent gives you the tools and guidance to build a complete business identity. Start using free resources at northwestregisteredagent.com/ yapfree. Whatnot helps sellers grow through live shopping, community, and real-time connections with buyers. Search Whatnot, W-H-A-T-N-O-T, in the App Store, download, and you can start selling right away. Mod connects qualifying patients with licensed medical providers for modafinil to support sustained energy, focus, and alertness throughout the day. Visit mod.com for a free consultation and get 10% off your first order plus free shipping with promo code PROFITING.

• 0:45Hala Taha?

  See their website for important safety information. AG1 Next Gen supports your nutritional foundation with vitamins, minerals, pre- and probiotics, and superfoods. Go to drinkag1.com/profitting and get a free immune support bundle with your first subscription order. As always, you can find all of our incredible deals in the show notes or at youngandprofiting.com/deals. Yap Gang, the old rulebook to success is broken. Earlier this week on Monday, we talked about how simply working hard isn't enough anymore to get ahead. But when you zoom out for a second, the conversation gets even bigger. Today's Yap Classic explores why success actually feels harder for younger generations in the first place. And nobody breaks that down quite like Scott Galloway,

• 1:29Hala Taha?

  entrepreneur, NYU professor, and bestselling author. Major economic shifts, changing social dynamics, the world we live in today looks totally different than the one that our parents grew up in. In this episode, we dig into what's really driving that and why understanding it is the first step to building a life that actually works today. So buckle up, take notes, and thank me later. Young and profiteers, we have Scott Galloway on the show. He's also known as Pop G.

• 1:55Speaker 01

  What a thrill. What a thrill. Oh my gosh, you're welcome.

• 1:58Hala Taha?

  So Scott, let's get started in terms of your upbringing and your childhood. You say your childhood was remarkably unremarkable. And I'd love to understand, do you think that you would have thought you would have become, you know, the uber-successful person that you are today or anybody around you at that time? I'd love to hear about your childhood.

• 2:18Speaker 01

  Born and raised by a single immigrant mother who lived and died a secretary. Really remarkably unremarkable. I didn't do that well on the SAT. I did okay academically. But it wasn't a sob story. We had a nice life. We took nice vacations. I had someone irrationally passionate about my well-being, which I think is kind of the one of the key pillars of success, that being my mother. I had nice friends. But I graduated from high school with a 3.2 GPA, 1100 on the SAT. But the difference was the big hand of government lifted me up. The admissions rate at UCLA when I applied was 76% and I had to apply twice.

• 3:02Speaker 01

  But they let me in and I rewarded their faith in me with a 2.27 GPA, undergraduate GPA. And then a second stroke of luck, Berkeley decided to let me into graduate school and then I kind of got my act together. But I've often, up until the age of 40, talked about my background as if I overcame something. And when I realized how, as I got older and I just gained a little bit more perspective, I started to hit the lottery. Being born a white heterosexual male in the mid 60s meant that I came of age when there was free amazing state-sponsored education, see above UCLA and Berkeley. I came into my professional earning years with the processing power and the kind of the rise of the internet.

• 3:48Speaker 01

  And the thing I always remind myself of, my freshman roommate in college was born a homosexual male and was dead of AIDS at the age of 33. So I try to always keep in mind that a lot of my success is my fault. So the first 40 years of my life, I would describe my upbringing as something that I overcame. Now I realize that I was more blessed than probably 99% of the public, but fairly unremarkable upbringing.

• 4:13Hala Taha?

  Yeah, it's really interesting. We have something in common, which is we both graduated with 2.27 GPAs from under like

• 4:21Speaker 01

  No kidding.

• 4:22Hala Taha?

  Exact GPA, I swear.

• 4:23Speaker 01

  Where did you go to school?

• 4:24Hala Taha?

  I went to New Jersey Institute of Technology and so it was an engineering school. And you know, I was too immature to do well in college at the time. I was always very smart, but just not book smart. But it still was a great experience and you say the same, that college really set you off to be successful and had you not went to college, you wouldn't have gotten this social, you know, experience that you needed. And same thing with me. So I'd love to hear about how college was beneficial for you and what do you think are the key factors of young people's success right now?

• 4:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was transformative for me. And the way things have changed since I was a kid, my mom was really excited that in the third grade, I got sent to fifth grade for math and English. But the thing is, men don't mature as quickly as women. And I went to UCLA when I was 17 and I was just too immature to handle it. I abused alcohol. I ended up in the emergency room once, terrible grades, almost got kicked out of school. But I joined a fraternity and I always say it was one of the best things, decisions I ever made because it shrunk a 30,000 person community down to something manageable for me. And I was around 22-year-old men and I remember getting a big brother and him saying to me, you know, you need to stop smoking so much pot and take your studies more, you know,

• 5:42Speaker 01

  more seriously. I needed that. I did have no male role models in my life. So I think greatness is in the agency of others. So it was a chance for me to make connections with people. I did learn a little bit, not a lot, but it was raised, for me, it was this kind of marination. It was a chance to develop social, you know, social and kind of life skills. I still think college is a great plan B. I think it gets a lot of Disparagement because people are looking for excuses to make themselves feel better because it's become so unattainable because it's so expensive or so exclusionary. So I actually think we need to dramatically expand freshman seats. It's not for everybody, but it's for a lot of people. I also think we need to dramatically expand the way we think about college and include

• 6:25Speaker 01

  one and two-year certifications in things like specialty construction, or health tech, or cybersecurity. But also, Hala, I don't know, I mean, going to UCLA, I played sports. It was just, it was just a great time. And I learned a lot about myself. I fell in love for the first time, got my heart broken for the first time, played sports. It was just a wonderful way to kind of develop your formative years. So I have very fond memories of college. And while I acknowledge it's not for everybody, I do think that we need to do a better job of making it more accessible for more people. Because I do think a lot of people benefit from a college experience. I think it's a wonderful experience, and had I not had it, I'm a talented person.

• 7:10Speaker 01

  I work very hard. I think I'd make a good living selling cars or copiers, but I wouldn't have, I wouldn't have been able to register the type of success and influence and economic security without the certification and experience that's offered by colleges.

• 7:23Hala Taha?

  Yeah, and I'd love to learn more about that because I know that you've done some research, or you're familiar with some data about how, how it's almost a requirement to have a pedigree and to have a college degree in order to attain, you know, that 1% level of success that so many of us who are listening to a show like this are wanting to achieve.

• 7:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would describe it as certification. We're in a certification economy, and that is about 50 years ago, one in four jobs required a college degree, now it's three in four. And it doesn't necessarily have to be a traditional BA, but a certification, a different, you know, a class three driver's license, or SCUBA instructor certification, or, you know, whatever it might be. The opportunity to stand out in a LinkedIn economy that says, I'm different, I have skills, you know, CFA, CPA, all of these things, you know, professional, if you will, some sort of certification, a degree in nursing, are just so important in terms of developing currency. And I think you're- I think the first piece of advice I give to people on a very basic level economically

• 8:29Speaker 01

  is get to a city and get certified. Two thirds of economic growth over the next 50 years is going to take place in 20 super cities. If you play tennis, you know that when you play with someone better than you, your game naturally rises. And when you're in a city, you're playing tennis against the best in the world. And it's competitive and it's difficult and it's expensive, but your game gets stronger. In addition, you want to get some sort of certification. It doesn't have to be a traditional four-year BA degree, liberal arts degree, but you need something that when people see your profile on LinkedIn, they go, okay, this person has specific skills. And it all kind of bubbles up to, I think, your primary mission in your twenties is not to follow your passion. I think that's terrible advice. I think it's to find your talent. And that is figure out what you're good at.

• 9:12Speaker 01

  And then really invest a lot of money in becoming great at that thing. And if you're great at something, the accoutrements of being great, money, camaraderie, relevance, influence, pride, will make you passionate about whatever it is. So that's your job, I think, coming out of school, is figure out what you're good at and try and become great at it.

• 9:32Hala Taha?

  Yeah. I think that's really smart advice because a lot of people, you know, go try to find, follow their passion, but they're not necessarily good at it. So I recently had Alex Hermosy on. He's a really smart guy and he said something that I thought that you may find interesting. He was talking about focus. And he was saying how a lot of young people right now, they're not spending enough time on one thing. They're, you know, not getting the success right away, they're not getting progress right away, and they're kind of dropping it and moving on to the next shiny object. And so I'd love to hear your perspective about the importance of focusing on a goal once you've sort of set out for that thing.

• 10:11Speaker 01

  Well, metrics are important, whether it's working out or whether it's forcing yourself to get out of the house a certain number of days a week to try and make more connections, whether it's saving a certain amount of money per month. You know, what gets measured gets done. So a goal is a dream with a deadline. I think it's important to have a few metrics. I think it's also to figure out, kind of reverse engineer, like where do I think a decent A decent exercise, say, where do I want to be in five years? Well, I want to have a graduate degree, right? Well, I want to have a hundred thousand dollars in savings. Well, I want to be living in a major city, whatever it might be. And then reverse engineer the likely steps and skills that you're going to need to get to that point and just kind of work your way backwards. And greatness is sort of like how to eat an elephant. It's one bite at a time.

• 10:56Speaker 01

  And then try and reverse engineer it or bring it down granular. Like, what do I need to get done this week? If I'm going to have a graduate degree in five years, what do I need to get done this week? Well, okay, I need to get applications for undergraduate schools. I'm going to save a hundred thousand dollars in five years. I need to save approximately, I don't know, fourteen thousand dollars a year, assuming a certain interest rate. That means this month I need to save twelve hundred dollars. Well, I can't, but I can save six hundred. Well, would that mean in terms of my spending this week? But basically come up with a big goal and then try and reverse engineer it into bite-sized bites that are doable. Because I just think, like I said, small things add up to very big things very fast. Compound interest is sort of the most powerful force in the universe.

• 11:39Speaker 01

  Supposedly Einstein said it, although he didn't, it was someone else. But when you're your age, Hala, my general thought was, I'm not going to save money because I'm such a baller. At some point, I'm going to make tens of millions of dollars. But time goes really fast. And if I could give you a magic box and you could put ten grand in that box and get a hundred grand back, how much would you put into that box? The answer is probably a lot. You might even sacrifice or trade off some short-term things. Well, that box is just time. And it was yesterday when I was your age and I woke up and I'm my age. And I'd wish I'd been more disciplined. You know, I got lucky later in life professionally, but I took a lot of risks. I could have ended up in a bad spot. And your insurance policy is just saving a certain amount of money. The algebra of wealth is pretty straightforward.

• 12:23Speaker 01

  Find your talent through focus. Live like a stoic or live below your means. Try and always save money from a very early age. It's really powerful. Diversify, don't go all in on anything, it's dangerous. The market's bigger than any one individual. Don't put all of your money into Dogecoin or Google. Diversify and then let time take over. The best performing investors are actually dead people because they don't trade a lot. So, you know, you may want to go all in on your own business at some point. You may want to borrow money to improve yourself, whether it's for college or some sort of certification. But generally those steps, you know, focus, stoicism, diversification, and then letting time take over

• 13:07Speaker 01

  are sort of not surefire, not surefire ways to get rich, but best practices. So, you know, the good news is I know how to get you rich. The bad news is the answer is slowly, but there is an algebra to it.

• 13:20Hala Taha?

  That's really interesting stuff and I'd love to go back to your story because I think that there was a very transformative point in your life. So when you were 26 years old, I believe you were 26 years old, your mom got terminally ill with cancer. And at that moment in your life, you made a decision that really impacted what we were just talking about. Focus, your goals and what you really wanted in life thereafter. So I'd love to hear about that moment in your life and the decisions that you made as a result of it.

• 13:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was, I was kind of a fuck up until that point. I had some potential, I was smart, or you know, did, I had some natural gifts academically, but that I didn't really apply myself. I was lazy, I was just sort of a classic underachiever. I don't think I was a very high character person. I didn't think much about other people. And it was just me and my mom and my mom got very sick. And I remember coming home, I remember the weekend, she was discharged from the hospital early after surgery and massive chemo. And I just didn't know what to do. And she was very sick and I didn't, you know, I'm like, do I get a nurse? Do I get her to a hospital? No hospital will take her. And I remember thinking, and it sounds very crass, how I remember thinking, I just wish I had more money. I can't take care of my mom.

• 14:33Speaker 01

  And there's certain instincts to take over, I think, with any child, but especially the only child and especially the only child who's a male, who's supposed to, you know, all these instincts bubble up. That I was failing as a man and I was failing as a son. And I decided there and then that I didn't decide to be rich. I don't think you can make that decision. There's a lot of luck that comes along with it. But I decided that I was going to get my act together because I wanted to take care of my mom. And that's really when I, I just started getting very focused and I've worked very hard from that point. I got very, very. Serious about work and trying to establish economic security. And I feel as if there's always kind of two key moments around transitioning from becoming a child to a grown up. And I would describe myself at the age of 26 as kind of a man child.

• 15:18Speaker 01

  I just focused on parting and trying to have bigger experiences and trying to have, you know, date more and more awesome women and have more and more interesting experiences and just like more. I just always wanted more and never really sated my appetite and didn't really have kind of what I call long-term satisfaction or anything. And then my mom got very sick and that was very eye-opening for me. So I feel like I grew up there. And then the next place you grow up, I think, is when you have a kid. And that sort of, you know, so birth and death are kind of the seminal moments in your life. And also, the lesson I would offer to young people is that kind of zero to 25 is really happy. There's a lot of studies on happiness and happiness in terms of longitudinally looks like a smile.

• 16:03Speaker 01

  And that is, zero to 25 is Star Wars, beer, college football games. It's just awesome. 25 to 45 is what I call the shit gets real time of your life. You find out that you're not going to have a fragrance named after you or you're not going to be senator. You find out that work is hard. You have some financial stress. Maybe you have kids, which is very stressful. Someone you love and loves you immensely gets sick and dies. And it's just, it's really a punch in the gut. You're just not ready. No one, I don't think anyone can prepare you for that. Now, relationships are stressful. The workplace is stressful. And then something happens wonderful at 45 or younger, if you're soulful, and that is you start to find joy in weird things. I remembered, I don't know if your parents were ever like this, but I remember my mom

• 16:44Speaker 01

  like ordering a salad and the salad would come and she'd grab my hand and say, "Look at this salad. Look how beautiful this is." And I remember thinking like, "What is she talking about?" But now I can relate to that because I take my dogs for a walk. I'm in London right now in Hyde Park and they have this, I'm not even into art and they had a Frieze festival and they had all this outdoor sculpture. I'm not into any of this stuff, but I couldn't help but stop and just marvel at it. And I'm not sure I would have stopped to smell the statues, if you will. 20 years ago, so what I tell young people who are struggling with the fact that their life isn't living up to their Instagram feed, or maybe what their parents or their university told them would happen by the time they were 30, that is life, that you're going through what everyone goes through, and to keep on keeping on, that one foot in front of the

• 17:28Speaker 01

  other, that happiness waits for you, but there's just no getting around it, some people sooner than others, life hits you pretty hard, pretty fast, when you hit your twenties, and I can't say it's easy, but what I can tell you is, everyone goes through that, and for me, the places I grew up were around, losing my mom when she was really sick, and wanting to take care of her, and then realizing it wasn't all about me when I had my first kid.

• 17:52Hala Taha?

  I find this really fascinating, that you're talking about this, I had a conversation with Arthur Brooks, a couple months ago, and he talks about this concept of fluid intelligence versus crystallized intelligence, and when you're in your twenties and your thirties, you've got all this fluid intelligence, you're able to problem solve, you're innovative, you're crushing it at work, and once you reach like, your mid 40s, your 50s, that's when you have crystallized intelligence, and a lot of people fail, because they're trying to chase that fluid intelligence that they had in their twenties and their thirties, and they can't compete with, you know, the younger generation, and really what they need to do is turn into a coach or a teacher, and start teaching the younger generation, if they want to, you know, have that second, you know, phase of happiness or success in

• 18:37Hala Taha?

  their life, and a lot of people miss that, and so, it's just one of the lessons that I'm really starting to unfold on this podcast, is like, you've got to put in the work, when you're in your twenties and thirties, because you'll be, you know, way better off doing it now, than waiting until you're 40 and 50, because it's, it's much harder later on, to attain that level of success, if your goal is monetary success, and being, you know, very financially well off.

• 19:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, like we're siblings from another mother here that, and let's start with, it's not necessarily the right way, but it's what I'll call the capitalist way. And that is, I believe in America becomes more like itself every day. And that is, it's a loving generous place if you have money. It's a rapacious violent place if you don't have money. So, you know, you were born or you live in a capitalist society, money is important. And wealthy people don't talk a lot about money. I almost think it's sort of unfair because I think they want to hide, they want to pretend that they're just such geniuses that they don't think about money. That's like saying Roger Federer doesn't think about tennis. If you want to be good at money, you need to think about it a lot. And I'm not saying being obsessed with it because there's a dignity to living below

• 19:45Speaker 01

  your means, moving to a lower cost area, kind of working to live, not living to work. But if you are ambitious, as I imagine the majority of the people listening to this podcast, get rid of or dispel the myth of balance. I had almost no balance when I was your age. I worked pretty much all the time. Young people will always find time to drink and to mate. Those instincts are so powerful that you'll find opportunities. But in terms of, I had no hobbies. I didn't, you know, I didn't do, from kind of the age of 25 to 45, I don't remember much else but working. And unless you're smart enough to inherit money, you're going to have to work your ass off. It's a competitive marketplace out there.

• 20:29Speaker 01

  And I really don't know anybody who's been very successful economically that hasn't spent the better part of 20 years doing pretty much nothing but working. And it comes at a cost. I always say it cost me my marriage, it cost me my hair, and it was worth it. And that sounds very crass, but the reason I can take my boys to World Cup, you know, kick off early from work and take my dogs, you know, to the park, I'm in great shape for a guy my age. The reason I have so much balance now, Hala, is because I had almost none when I was your age. And it all goes back to this notion that you can have it all, you just can't have it all at once. And what you want to do is, you want to, in my opinion, burn a lot of fuel when you're young, because you don't have, usually have dogs, you don't have spouses, you don't have kids.

• 21:13Speaker 01

  You have the energy, you're learning a lot. I came out of UCLA, again, kind of unremarkable, and somehow I got a job at Morgan Stanley in fixed income. And my peers in the analyst class were just better educated and more talented than me. And I decided that every Tuesday morning, I was gonna go to work and I was gonna stay till Wednesday night. I would work through the night. I'd work thirty-six hours straight. And it kind of demonstrated, it told everybody I came to play. I was capable of doing it. I was physically very fit. I was mentally pretty strong. And I didn't have dogs or kids or a spouse waiting for me at home. I was living with my mom. I had nothing going on. So, the time, you know, I think of it kind of as a, you know, an aviation reference

• 21:57Speaker 01

  or a rocket reference. You need to get to outer space and the atmosphere is very thick when you're just starting. You need to focus, you need to guide, guide yourself on the launchpad, and then you need to burn a lot of fuel. And if you can get some success, if you can save some money, if you can get a reputation, if you can establish business relationships, if you get some credibility in the marketplace, when you do punch through out of the inner orbit into the outer orbit, your efforts get rewarded more. Like, I have momentum now, so I can cover much more ground with less fuel than most young people can because I have contacts, a reputation, existing business relationships, et cetera. But you gotta burn that fuel when you're young. And the other thing I would tell you is time goes really fast.

• 22:40Speaker 01

  So, I'm always about, you know, head down, get on it. It sounds very boomer, and I wanna acknowledge again, it's not the right way, it's just my way. But I'm glad I made those sort of sacrifices when I was younger because it goes really fast and I get to really enjoy myself now. And anyway, so, give up the myth of balance. It just, I think it's a myth.

• 23:00Hala Taha?

  Yeah, I totally agree there. I mean, I have a similar story in terms that I feel like I was sort of a late bloomer too. And I hustled like crazy in terms of my work ethic. I know for, five years ago, I started this podcast and now I have a business, a social agency, a podcast network, all this stuff. And all I did was work for five years straight and delay gratification and not go out with my friends. And I lost so many friends and I broke up with my boyfriend of ten years and I didn't get married and all these things that you're supposed To kind of do, but I don't regret it at all because I've achieved this level of success that I feel like had I not done that.

• 23:40Hala Taha?

  There's no way I would have been where I am today. And now I'm actually on the younger side of everybody else who I'm competing with. Because I focused so hard for for a period of time and all I did was have this singular goal of learning everything about what I needed to learn about about social and podcasts and whatever. And of course, I had other experiences that helped me before, but I have a lot of guests on the show that disagree with this point of sacrificing your relationships. For example, to focus on wealth and success. I had Daniel Pink on the show and he said that the number one reason for regret is this thing called connection regret. He studied over 16,000 people and

• 24:21Hala Taha?

  it's it's this regret of not staying connected to the important people in our lives. So I'd love to understand if if you think there's any sort of decision making framework that we should have in terms of, you know, how much do we really want this thing compared to our relationships or just your advice on is it really impossible to manage all of that and have everything in your opinion?

• 24:47Speaker 01

  Everyone is going to know someone, at least on Instagram, that is good looking, in great shape, has a great relationship with their parents, makes a shit ton of money and has a food blog and donates time at the ASPCA. Assume you are not that person. You have to pick your punches. I think as a young person, you want to be very focused on your career. I think in terms of relationships.

• 25:09Speaker 01

  I'm familiar with Daniel Pink's work and Adam Alter's done a lot of work around regrets on your deathbed, if you will, and a lot of it comes down to not staying in touch with people. Not living the life that you wanted to live, being who you were, you know, doing things for other people or trying to please other people. And the number one regret is people wish they'd been less hard on themselves. They wish that they'd been more forgiving of their failures. But anyways, I do think that when you're young, you can get just as you can make small investments or save a small amount of money when you're young and it adds up to big big amounts when you're older. I think small investments in relationships when you're young, small consistent investments pay off. So.

• 25:47Speaker 01

  I think the things you want to stay focused on are work first and foremost. Number two is fitness, mental and physical strength. And that is run long distances and lift heavy weights in your mind and in the gym. I think you get that time back. I think if you work out 30 minutes a day, you're going to be able to, you know, you're going to be, you get that time back every day. You're just more energetic, you feel better, you have more opportunities, you're able to work harder, you have a broader selection set of mates, you feel better about yourself, you're kinder, more confident. I do think though, you can invest in relationships early and often, quick text messages to people, having the confidence to express interest in being friends with someone, talking to

• 26:31Speaker 01

  strangers, accepting dinner invites, trying to really push the limits of your comfort zones around putting yourself in a, creating serendipity, you know. Hmm. You know, I met the mother of my children at the pool at the Raleigh Hotel because I walked in and said, I am going to go talk to this woman. I said, before I leave, I'm going to go and speak to her. And my son's middle name is Raleigh. So there's a balance. I think those three things, work, relationships and fitness are kind of the only things you should be focusing on. But I think you can get a lot of traction as a young person. Young people are, get invited to a lot of stuff, they're very social, quite frankly, they're very attractive, so you're going to have more opportunities as a young person. There's more third spaces with a lot of other people, whether it's Coachella or the gym,

• 27:16Speaker 01

  it's just packed with a lot of young people. You want to take advantage and try and make investments in that as, you know, as often as is feasible. Hmm. And what I find generally speaking is that young people are really good at scaling socially, that they figure out those opportunities. And also being aggressive, talking to strangers, being open to stuff because

• 27:41Speaker 01

  It's really important who you end up with, specifically who you have kids with, is probably the most important decision you'll make in your twenties and thirties. It's not where you go to work, it's not where you live. A good partner will help you aggregate success and wealth. A bad partner, you know, just kind of screw up everything. So what you want to do is you want to put yourself in a position to have as many opportunities as possible. So I do think it's a balance. Over time, there's a lot of research that shows that happiness is a function of how many deep and meaningful relationships you have. But once you have those relationships, you want to ideally starch out the economic anxiety, of which there's a lot in America if you aren't secure. So I think you want to, again, going back to our original notion, I think work requires a lot of energy.

• 28:25Speaker 01

  But just as you make small investments every month, a small investment every day. Reach out to somebody, do you want to grab brunch this weekend? Add a quick text message, I thought you did so well in that meeting, I'm so impressed with you. Talking to a stranger that you might have some interest in romantically, I mean, there's nothing wrong with that. We've kind of conflated this. We're also, our lawyers are supposed to meet at the studios of MSNBC and decide if we're interested in each other. Things have gotten so weird around mating and human sexuality. It's okay to express interest in somebody. And if you don't know the difference between expressing interest and harassing someone, you have bigger problems. But I worry people your age aren't making friends. They aren't, you know, connecting romantically, they aren't finding mentors, we're all, none of us are going, few of us are going to work anymore, we're definitely not going to the

• 29:10Speaker 01

  mall, none of us are going to the movies anymore. So where do young people find those third spaces? So work, relationships, and fitness is kind of my, if you will, my triangle or my pyramid.

• 29:21Hala Taha?

  Yeah, I think that's excellent advice. And I want to spend a big chunk of time talking about young men and marriage and mating inequality and all that stuff, because I feel like it's so interesting. But first, let's kick off with some stuff in your book Adrift. You talk about the American dream in your book, and I think there's lots of like ties into what we're talking about right now. And so, back in the day, it used to be that you work hard and, you know, you could ultimately do better than your parents. But kids our age and young people, I shouldn't say our age, but young people out there right now, they're not doing better than their parents were. People in their thirties are not doing as well as their parents were when they were thirty or forty. Can you talk to us about why?

• 30:05Speaker 01

  So sure, so first off, if you were born in 1941, there was a 93% chance you were going to do better than your parents. So unless you had some sort of physical or emotional, you know, disability, you were going to do better. Now it's 49%. So for the first time in the history of America, a 30-year-old man or woman isn't doing as well as his or her parents were at 30. That creates tremendous shame, anxiety, and rage. Because the ultimate compact a population has with its society is that if I play with the rules and work hard, my kids will do better than me. And now you have over half of people under the age of 30 not living with a friend or romantic partner, they're living at home. So you have constant reminders that you're not doing that well called mom and dad. And this creates anxiety and rage and shame for both the parents and the kid.

• 30:48Speaker 01

  And I think a lot of our dissatisfaction and polarization in our country right now stems directly from that. I think it is a concerted effort that has taken place deliberately. The entrenched incumbents will claim that it's these big, this impact of these uncontrollable, big, intractable forces. Polarization, or globalization, or network effects. I think it's been a concerted decision by people a bit older than me to transfer wealth from young people to old people. People under the age of 40 used to control 19% of the nation's GDP. Their wealth amounted to 19%. And the last 40 years has gone from 19 to 9.

• 31:30Speaker 01

  A person over the age of 70 is now 72% wealthier than they were, people over the age of 70 were 40 years ago. But a person under the age of 40 is 22% less wealthy than they were 40 years ago. And you think, well, what's happened? Has the economy slowed down? No. Productivity continues to rip upward and to the right. This weird thing happened in 1971, where basically wages and productivity followed each other like two snakes intertwined. The nation became more productive, wages went up. Nation got a lot more productive, wages went way up. And then in 1971, something happened, and that is wages flatlined. And that is we decided that the majority of the spoils of increases in productivity,

• 32:13Speaker 01

  and now we produce more in a month than we did an entire year in the 50s, would go to shareholders. And there's some benefits to that. The markets go up. It makes them more attractive to start a business. We have the best capital markets in the world. But the wage earners, or the middle class, or the young, who get the majority of their income through current income, started falling behind.

• 32:32Speaker 01

  So you think, well, okay, why did that happen? It happened because we decided to make it happen. And that is the two largest tax breaks in American society are mortgage interests and capital gains. Who owns stocks and homes? People my age. Who rents and makes their money through current income? People your age. So while each year I likely have more income than you, because it comes in the form of capital gains, dividends, selling stocks, I pay a lower tax rate than you do. That makes no sense. So, and then if you look back on, well, how's this happened? Our leadership, our elected representatives are the oldest in the world. And every year they get older because they have figured out a way to create incumbency where 95% of the time the incumbent is reelected.

• 33:17Speaker 01

  So we have a Speaker of the House that is 81, a Senate Minority Leader that is 82, a Senate Majority Leader that is 72, and a President that if he's reelected, will leave the West Lawn for the last time in Marine One at the age of 86. And his competitor will be an obese 82-year-old if he gets reelected and leaves for the last time. And then the first two states that dictate the presidential race are Iowa and Maine, two of the oldest states in the Union. So what do you have? You end up with programs like Social Security and people, that's a third rail. I can never run for office because I've said I don't think Social Security is executed well. Why are we, when I say we, why are you and your cohorts, working cohorts, and I'm still

• 34:00Speaker 01

  one of them, I'm under the age of 50, why are you transferring a trillion and a half dollars of wealth every year to the wealthiest cohort in the history of the planet, US seniors? Shouldn't it be the other way around? So why, the cohort that has killed it and is wealthier gets a trillion and a half dollars from young people in the form of Social Security? I'm not saying we should do away with it. There's no reason why I should ever get Social Security. There's no reason my dad should be getting Social Security. And people say, well, it's a pension. I put money in. The average Social Security recipient will take out two to three times what they put in. It's called Social Security tax, not Social Security Pension Fund, meaning that a tax goes into the kitty such that it might help people, other people, benefit the country, and you might not benefit directly from it.

• 34:45Speaker 01

  So everything we've done. I would argue, over the last 50 years, has been to execute a transfer of wealth from young people to old people. And as a result, we end up with a breaking of the most basic of social compacts, and we end up with rage and shame. And I think we can fix it, we need to bring down the cost of education. Kids can no longer access the middle, you know, the American dream as easily. Housing has skyrocketed because we made taxes lower, so money went into the market. If you already own a home, it's great, but what if you're trying to buy a home? It's gotten so incredibly expensive. What if you're trying to get a degree? So I think we have, we can, the bad news is, we have transferred all this wealth from young to old people.

• 35:27Speaker 01

  The good news is, these are problems of our own making, and we can unmake them. But we have to revert to where past generations were, and that is willing to make sacrifices to invest in the health of younger generations. And some, you know, they talk about the greatest generation, baby boomers are by far the greediest generation. It seems like everything we do is such that we can upgrade, upgrade Nana and Pop Pop from Carnival Cruises to Crystal Cruises. It needs to stop, we need to start investing in young people.

• 35:53Hala Taha?

  What do you think the implications are for the future if we don't start investing in young people?

• 35:59Speaker 01

  Violence and revolution. I mean, what you have here, it has so many knock-on effects, because who it's really hurt is young men. And that is, a lot of the jobs that young men used to have as on-ramps into the middle class were generally industries that over-indexed male, manufacturing, frontline work. Those jobs have been outsourced overseas. In addition, once we leveled the playing field academically, women just blew by men. Women are more mature, they're more disciplined, they're better at delaying gratification, and over the next five years, we're gonna have two women graduate from college from every one man. Now, you think, well, fine, women deserve it, it's time, it's their time. There's a lot of knock on effects here, though. So we don't like to talk about this on the left.

• 36:43Speaker 01

  But essentially, women may socioeconomically horizontally and up, men horizontally and down. Or put another way, a woman with a college degree isn't interested in marrying a man without a college degree. Marriage has become a luxury item. If you're a man and you're in the upper quintile, there's a 75% chance you'll get married. If you're in the lowest quintile, it's a 25% chance you're gonna get married. So you have a lot of loneliness on both ends. And you have this mating inequality, where if Tinder were a country, it would be like Venezuela. And that is, if you have 50 men and 50 women on Tinder, 42 of the women will show all of their attention to just eight men, leaving 42 men fighting over eight women. Because women have a much finer filter around mating. Guys see a picture on Tinder and go, "Oh, she's cute, swipe right."

• 37:27Speaker 01

  Women have much finer criteria. And when they can apply it to everybody, because everybody is available online, or at least theoretically, they get a chance to implement their filter. Whereas before, we had these geographic mating ring fences. You went to temple every Friday. There were eight single women and eight single men, and you kind of all slowly but surely pared off and figured it out. Now, the top 10% of attractiveness of males engage in what I call Porsche polygamy. And that is, they get 80 to 90% of the interest, which doesn't lead to long-term relationships and, quite frankly, bad behavior. 50 to 90 in terms of attractiveness for men do okay or the same. But the bottom half of men in terms of attractiveness have been totally shut out of the mating market.

• 38:09Speaker 01

  It makes them angry, detached, they're more likely to be prone to misogynistic content, they think it's a woman's fault, they're more likely to believe in conspiracy theory, they're less likely to believe in climate change. And generally speaking, online dating has just made it a little bit shittier for all women. So what we have is an entire cohort of what I call emotionally and economically unviable men. And so women are leveling up and it's great, but they're not interested in the men our society is producing right now. And the most violent unstable societies in the world all have too many of the same thing, and that is a broke and lonely young man. And we are producing too many of them. So leveling up and making a massive investment in young people vocational programming, more seats, freshman seats in universities,

• 38:54Speaker 01

  tax, fiscal, tax and fiscal policy that restores some of that income and wealth to younger generations. That will level up all young people, but it'll have a disproportionately powerful effect on men who have taken the brunt of some of these structural changes over the last 40 years.

• 39:09Hala Taha?

  I am like loving this topic and I have a really funny story to share that I think correlates with a lot of your data and research. So I have a social media client. His name is Marshall Goldsmith. He's this legendary executive coach, bestselling author. I manage his social media.

• 39:24Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 39:24Hala Taha?

  And so whenever he meets with me and my business partner Kate, he's always telling us like, I don't understand how you girls aren't married. He's like, and he's just like, all the young men today, they're just terrible. You guys have to marry down. My daughter had to marry down. If you guys want to get married, you've got to think about marrying down. And he's like, the only way you guys are going to get married is if you marry down, which I like, we laugh. We're both in happy relationships, but and we laugh at him because we're like, okay, Marshall, like, but it actually correlates with what you're saying. So I'd love to understand, you know, what is marriage rates like in this country? Are people getting married less? And how does that impact the economy and impact, you know, society overall?

• 40:09Speaker 01

  Well, it depends on the cohort. Wealthy people, kind of middle income to upper income, their, their marriage rates are holding mostly strong. People having kids later in life are having fewer kids. So we could run into a birth dearth, which is bad for the economy, fewer people to support those social security payments. And another myth is overpopulation. It's time we just stop talking about it. And that is, uh, when you have a kid, that kid, yeah, sure, that kid will take resources, maybe produce carbon, maybe eat meat or other crimes against humanity, but most Likely that person, that kid, that baby girl or baby boy is going to come up with wonderful innovation that makes the world a better place. You need more people and this notion of overpopulation, there are certain parts of the earth that are overpopulated.

• 40:54Speaker 01

  But just get on a plane from New York to San Francisco, look down a hundred times, ninety-five times, there's nothing. There's literally nothing. And so we want to encourage economically and emotionally viable people to have kids. Kids are a wonderful thing. It, you know, I, I would have never thought it. I had no interest in kids, but I've really, uh, really enjoyed it. You know, the marriage rates flat to declining across society as a whole, but it really gets, it's really fallen off a cliff. For, um, people who are middle or lower income or on the bottom, the bottom median. And I never thought I would have said this. I never wanted to be married. I don't think you have to be married to be happy.

• 41:35Speaker 01

  But generally speaking, people are happier when they're in some sort of committed, monogamous relationship. And at the end of life, you're talking about Steven Pink. Generally speaking, the things they remember the most are family. They don't want to be around awesome people or famous celebrities when they go. They want to be around loved ones who, you know, they love immensely and who love them immensely. So the issue I see is I see a lot of young men. Who are becoming economically and emotionally unviable. They get excluded socially. They don't find a job. They don't make money. They don't get out. They don't develop social skills. They don't develop professional skills and they. Uh, once they hit a certain point, they almost become kind of unviable.

• 42:17Speaker 01

  And, and also a romantic relationship is a great guardrail. You know, stop getting high every night. Get in shape. You know, we make each other better. Uh, spouses, boyfriends, girlfriends, friends. They motivate each other. They're competitive. And to compete is a, is a Greek term that means to strive together, to make each other better. When the Olympic athletes were training, they found with they trained together, they made each other faster. And mates, friends, friends, uh, girlfriends, boyfriends, spouses, parents.

• 42:49Speaker 01

  You know, they're great guardrails. And when you isolate young men who have that, again, that immature prefrontal cortex, and then they can find a reasonable facsimile of DOPA that you used to get through playing sports, or from starting a business, or from making money, or from kissing someone for the first time. When you can get a reasonable facsimile of that DOPA hit on your phone or on your computer, it lowers your mojo to get out of the house, and those skills continue to atrophy. So, you know, one of the things I tell young men, I coach a lot of young men, you have to get out of the house every day. You have to force yourself to meet strangers. You gotta start making money. I don't care if you think it's below you. I don't think, you know, work at a CVS, turn on DoorDash, turn on Uber, whatever it is. Get a taste for flesh.

• 43:34Speaker 01

  Start making money. Money's a wonderful thing, and the key to making more money is to make some money. Go up to a stranger, you know, join a church group, a softball league, a writing group, a junior college class, whatever it is, and force yourself to approach strangers to express an interest in conversing with them, an interest in being their friend, and maybe, who knows, even an interest in a romantic relationship. There's nothing wrong with that. I do think men get a lot of mixed signals, that approaching anybody is considered like dangerous, if you will. And I think some of the wonderful thing about men is that they're, they're more aggressive. But aggressive doesn't have to mean anything resembling any sort of physical violence. It can mean initiating conversations.

• 44:17Speaker 01

  And the people I get the most feedback from, feminists don't like what I say, or a lot of feminists don't like what I say, although they're coming around to it. Some famous feminists have now acknowledged it's a real problem taking place with younger men. Young men sometimes resent it, because they feel as if I'm calling them incels, and they've been stereotyped, like, just because I'm an introvert doesn't mean I can't add value to society. That's fine, there's some fairness. By far, the cohort that is most supportive, hands down, are mothers. You say, "My daughter's killing it. She's at Penn. My other daughter's working in PR in Chicago, and my son's in the basement playing video games and vaping." We have, we are losing an entire generation of men, and I think a lot of it comes down

• 44:56Speaker 01

  to a need to redefine masculinity, so it's that men feel comfortable embracing their masculinity, and also recognizing that masculinity isn't just purely the domain of people born. As males, masculinity and femininity are both wonderful attributes that can be shared by men and women, but to re-embrace and celebrate what I call a modern or mature form of masculinity. But I think that your generation is suffering from a crisis of loneliness, a lack of connection to each other, and a lack of connection to the country. And those Japanese soldiers who went into the hills at the end of World War II accomplished nothing. Nothing great is accomplished alone. If you're spending a lot of time alone, you're not going to accomplish much.

• 45:38Speaker 01

  I don't care, you need to be around other people, you need to find new relationships. That is even more than anything, more than economics, more than certification. The thing I would wish for people in their twenties and thirties is that they have more opportunities to establish more relationships. I think it's, and I just came off this riff about working all the time, but you can establish a lot of deep relationships at work. I didn't have a lot of romantic relationships in my twenties. I was very immature, I was very insecure, but I had great relationships at work. I had great friendships, I, you know, became very involved in my mom's well-being. So, I always say that, you know, kind of love is out there. What's difficult for women is that they're so unfairly judged through the lens of romantic

• 46:21Speaker 01

  relationship, their success or lack thereof, through one type of relationship. And you can't force that. Sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn't. But you should always think, okay, how do I have really wonderful productive relationships and make little investments every day? And some of that is forcing yourself into uncomfortable spots. Initiating conversation with someone in the line at Starbucks, asking someone a coffee out at work, expressing admiration for someone and trying to establish a friendship. And because we've spent so much time alone in the last two and a half years, we think, I'd rather stay home and watch Netflix, or young men think I'd rather stay home and play video games, or trade on Robin Hood, or watch porn. No, you need to get out there. You need to get out there.

• 47:02Hala Taha?

  Yeah, I love that you had this conversation with us because most of my listeners surprisingly are male. I have like an 80% male audience who are these young men that you're talking about. Yeah. And so I'm really happy that you had this conversation. And for the women who might be listening, I feel like we all feel this, right? We see other women doing really well. We probably have a cousin or a brother or somebody who's struggling. What can we do as women, whether it's in terms of how we look for a partner and our perspective on that? Or, you know, what should we be doing? Because obviously, I don't think we're gonna

• 47:42Hala Taha?

  get affirmative action taken away or anything like that. And I think women are gonna continue to kind of thrive in the workplace. And the other thing I wanted to pick your brain about is the fact that leadership is still men, right? Politicians are still men. So there's still a lot of work to do. And so I'd just love to hear your thoughts on that. I know that was kind of

• 48:01Speaker 01

  I'll take that. I'll take that in reverse order. So there's been more. The one thing all of our elected officials have in common is about 95 or 98% of them have college degrees. We've decided that kind of realistically is the logical criteria for who we want to lead our nation or make big decisions. But we're inherently very sexist as a culture when it comes to leadership and elected representatives. We've been graduating more women from college for 40 years than men. And yet only 28% of our elected officials are female. We conflate voice and height with leadership qualities. So show me a 410 woman with a high pitched voice who's incredibly smart, incredibly hardworking, and a hello

• 48:42Speaker 01

  president of local school board. Show me a guy who's fairly smart, but tall and has a great voice. That guy's name is Senator. So we need to educate early on what it is, what's required, what are the key components of being a good leader, and also help people modulate for that. We just instinctively think of leadership as being powerful and we associate powerful with certain audio and visual sensations. So I think some of it Some of it is just education. The other thing is, I think we, um, you asked me for advice on, uh, women, younger women. And what I would say is, is that, I don't want to say lower standards.

• 49:22Speaker 01

  What I want to say is be open to the coffee or the second coffee. And that is, the problem with online dating is it's very two dimensional. You see their looks and then you make a, an assumption around their wealth. And women have three criteria for mating, or at least the research shows. Number three is kindness, number two is intelligence, and number one is resources. And so, uh, it's natural that they will make a judgment and then they will make kind of a, a zero, one, yes or no call. What I would suggest is pushing the limits of your comfort zone to give more people a chance. And if the date goes okay, but not great, be open to a second date to see if it goes from okay to good and then maybe to great.

• 50:01Speaker 01

  Every long-term relationship I've had, I wouldn't have guessed at the beginning it was going to become a long-term relationship. And we live in such an economy where there's so much fluidity of opportunity that we end up never really pursuing opportunities to their, to their potential. It's like, well, that wasn't great, that wasn't magic, so I'm back on the apps. Or I'm just not interested, or I'd rather stay at home and watch Netflix and work. I think that there needs to be a meeting of the minds. I think men need to get their act together emotionally and economically. I think we just need better men. And part of that is more men my age need to take more of an interest in younger men and help mentor them. I think we just need better, younger men.

• 50:42Speaker 01

  And what I would ask here, you know, is that women think, okay, how can I be, how can I be more open to exploring stuff and see if it might lead somewhere wonderful? Because the wonderful thing about human sexuality is it involves smell, it involves vibe, it involves humor. It involves seeing how that person behaves around their family. And I think a lot of people, especially women, will say, in the beginning, I didn't have that type of interest in this person and it grew. Their, their, their criteria are more subtle and more what I'd call long-term. And we live in an economy and a society that discourages that type of long-term exploration. Does that make any sense?

• 51:26Speaker 01

  I always get uncomfortable giving women advice because I don't feel I can relate to them as well.

• 51:30Hala Taha?

  No, it does make sense. I'm very aligned with a lot, like you don't have to worry about that with me. Like, I'm aligned with so much of what you're saying. The last thing I want to talk about in terms of this, and then we can kind of close out because I know that you have to go soon. So I had gotten out of a relationship two years ago. Now I'm in a happy new relationship. But I was with somebody for 10 years and I remember that when I used to go out, I, you know, would get approached by men all the time. They would come up to me all the time. Now, men, I would find that like younger men still have like, you know, the 10, I, I look a lot younger than I am. And so younger men would still approach me, but people my age, men my age, would never come up and talk to me when I was single.

• 52:12Hala Taha?

  And I thought this was so strange because I had been out of the dating game for 10 years. And so I'd love to hear your perspective on like, men actually getting the confidence to approach people in person, because I feel like people need to hear about this.

• 52:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I think men have gotten a lot of mixed signals here. There was an ad that Gillette ran, you know, Gillette, the best a man can get during the midst of the Me Too movement, that basically tried to redefine manhood. And there was this one scene that really rattled me, and that is a guy sees a really attractive woman, and he stands up to go approach her, and his friend gets in the way and says, no, no, no, no, don't do that, not cool, not cool. And I thought, that's where we are? Like, men aren't supposed to approach strange women? And the people, I find the thing I don't like about telling men how to behave and to tone their aggression down, is that it's people who already have mates telling them to do that.

• 53:07Speaker 01

  It's like, where, where are we supposed to find, where are people supposed to meet each other? And, and again, I'm making reductive comments here, and I don't have the research on it. But I think women, especially women, younger women, would actually appreciate, in a thoughtful, respectful way, men taking more initiative.

• 53:27Speaker 01

  And I consistently hear from young women, no man ever approaches me. Because I think men have been given mixed signals. One, they lack confidence, because quite frankly, their lack of confidence is common sense. They're not going to college, they don't have jobs, they're just not. They're not impressive young men, and they're failing. And they know that, and they're getting that cemented every day by their parents and the world telling them, "Okay, you're not living up to the expectations we have of people." But also, this notion that approaching a stranger or asking someone out, a third of relationships begin at work. What's the general viewpoint on sex at work? That it's almost borderline illegal.

• 54:09Speaker 01

  And if a man or a woman is in a very senior position, they should be verboten from relationships at work. They can take that shit off campus. There's a lot of awesome things to being a senior-level person in business. One of them should not be leveraging your power to find romantic relationships. But I've had three weddings. My last company that I sold was L2. I've had three weddings in the last month with people at L2, including one wedding where they met at L2. That's wonderful. So, it's okay at work. You have to be very careful. You want to make sure, especially if you're senior to that person, not to abuse your power. But it's okay to express romantic interest. And I worry that we've been sending mixed signals to men. Men need to embrace their masculinity, but first we have to identify what is masculinity.

• 54:54Speaker 01

  I think of it as garnering the skills and strengths such that you can protect and advocate for others. And a lot of it is being, okay, a little bit more aggressive. "I think that woman's interesting, I'm gonna go talk to her." If she's not interested, I will get that vibe almost right away. We will both part company, I will be polite, and you know what? You're both gonna be fine. You're both gonna be fine. And that rejection, or that ability to endure that rejection, is a function of your success. The reason I am successful is I've had businesses failed, and it never destroyed my confidence. It dented it at the time, but it didn't stop me from going out and starting another business. And the reason I've always been able to, not always, but most of the time, been able to attract potential mates that are more interesting and much better-looking than me,

• 55:39Speaker 01

  is that I'm not afraid of rejection. If I'm standing in line somewhere and I'm attracted to someone, I'll start talking to them. Or when I was a younger man, and I encourage younger men to do that. And if she's polite, but not interested and you can pick it up, that's fine. You're going to be polite and you're both going to move on with your lives. So success is a function, success professionally and romantically is a function of rejection. Specifically, your willingness to endure it. And my advice to young women is that when, like I said, just play things out a little longer and see where it goes, see where it goes.

• 56:15Hala Taha?

  Yeah, well, I feel like this has been such a great discussion. We covered a variety of topics. We didn't get through everything I wanted to, but I feel like we covered a lot of ground. I always end the show with two last questions. And here's where you can say anything that you feel like is really important that you want to share with my audience. So what is one actionable piece of advice you can give my young improfitters so they can become more profiting tomorrow? What is one thing they can do today to become more profitable tomorrow?

• 56:45Speaker 01

  Look at your phone, look at the screen time, find four to eight hours of wasted time, Robin Hood, TikTok, Twitter, streaming and reallocate that time into fitness and making more money. Try and find eight hours on your phone, take four of it and put it into fitness and put four of it into either working more at your current job. I don't believe in side hustles. If you have a side hustle, it means your main hustle isn't working. The best way to economic security is to take the time you were going to spend on a side hustle and put it into your main hustle and make your main hustle amazing and become great at it. But find, try and find eight hours out of your phone. We spend way too much time in our, in our phones. I probably spend two hours a day on Twitter. I'm addicted, it's terrible.

• 57:29Speaker 01

  But find eight hours a week on your phone and put four, reinvest four into fitness and four into money.

• 57:36Hala Taha?

  Yeah. And, and real quick, what is the power of exercise in your opinion? Like what does exercise do to everyone?

• 57:44Speaker 01

  We're a physical species and there's a ton of research that shows if you exercise three to four times a week, you're less likely to have a stroke, a heart attack. You're more likely to be kind, much more likely to be successful. The most common attribute of Fortune 500 CEOs isn't that they went to Ivy League schools. It's not even that they're white or male. It's that like 490 of them work out five times a week. You'll be kinder, you'll have a broader selection set of mates. I believe anybody your age should be able to walk into any room and know, and this is a goal, and know that if shit got real, you could kill and eat everybody or outrun them. You want to feel physically strong, fast and fit. It's not about being skinny. It's not about being ripped.

• 58:28Speaker 01

  It's about being a stronger version of yourself. You'll be much more mentally healthy. It's how you process anxiety. It's how you process anger. It's key. And people accuse me of fat shaming because I talk a lot about exercise. I know some people who are very big and are very strong and that's a wonderful thing. I do CrossFit. There's a huge contingent of lesbian firefighters and these women are so strong and so inspiring and don't care about the traditional norms around aesthetic as indicated by this heteronormative fashion industrial complex and they are inspiring. That's what you want to move to. You want to be a stronger version of yourself. Lift heavy weights and run long distances in the gym and in your mind.

• 59:09Hala Taha?

  Yeah. I asked that question because I always tell everyone you have to work out. It's not something that you can skip. It's really important. And what is your secret to profiting in life?

• 59:19Speaker 01

  A recognition that a lot of my success is not my fault. I try to be grateful. I try to recognize that I'm hugely blessed and I try and.

• 59:36Speaker 01

  You know, I just look at how first 40 years of my life, I was the kid who overcame, single mother, growing up without a lot of money. And then as I got older, I realized that being born a white heterosexual male in the 60s was hitting the lottery. My freshman year roommate in college was exactly the same as me, except God reached into his soul and made him homosexual. And he was dead of AIDS at 33. And neither of us had any choice over our sexuality. So every day I wake up and I realize that a lot of this is a function of being in the right place at the right time. It makes me more grateful. It makes me more appreciative. It makes me enjoy stuff more.

• 1:00:20Speaker 01

  And it makes me want to try and create more opportunity and more good fortune for other people.

• 1:00:24Hala Taha?

  That's really powerful. Scott Galloway, where can everybody learn more about you and everything that you do?

• 1:00:30Speaker 01

  Holla, to resist is futile. I'm everywhere. I'm @ProfGalloway on Twitter. I have a newsletter called No Mercy, No Malice. My new book is called Adrift: American 100 Charts. I have a YouTube show. I'm doing a show on the BBC called Tech Explorer with Scott Galloway. So to resist is futile. I'm everywhere.

• 1:00:52Hala Taha?

  Amazing. Congratulations on all your success. I love this conversation. Thanks for coming on.

• 1:00:56Speaker 01

  Thank you, Holla. Congrats on your success.