Speaker 1: This is Masters in Business with Barry Ridholts on Boomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: This week on the podcast, I have an extra special guest,
Speaker 1: and what can I say about Professor Scott Galloway. You
Speaker 1: know him from The four UH. He is an outspoken
Speaker 1: critic of various technology companies. He says exactly what he
Speaker 1: thinks and feels. He does not mince words. He has
Speaker 1: a brand new book out called The Algebra of Happiness
Speaker 1: that is already getting delightful reviews. I read it over
Speaker 1: the holiday weekend and found it to be a pleasant
Speaker 1: and enjoyable romp filled with all sorts of good advices.
Speaker 1: This is gonna be a stocking stuffer and a dad's
Speaker 1: and grads present for some time to come. I can
Speaker 1: babble for a long time explaining to you what's in
Speaker 1: our conversation, but rather than do that, I'm just gonna say,
Speaker 1: with no further ado, my conversation with Scott Galloway. Our
Speaker 1: special guest this week is our returning champion, our first
Speaker 1: four time Masters in Business UH guests. You know him
Speaker 1: from his book The Four Amazon, Apple, Google, and Facebook
Speaker 1: and how They're Destroying the World. He is a professor
Speaker 1: at Marketing at n y U Stern School of Business.
Speaker 1: His latest book, The Algebra of Happiness, just came out
Speaker 1: to great reviews. Professor Scott Galloway, Welcome to Bloomberg. Thanks
Speaker 1: very great to be here, and you are a returning champion.
Speaker 1: You are our first four time guest at least here
Speaker 1: in the studio. And you are the first person I
Speaker 1: think I've had on consecutive books. No, that's not true.
Speaker 1: I've had a few people for consecutive books. So let's
Speaker 1: start um with a little background. You wrote the four
Speaker 1: It was effectively a class you were giving at n
Speaker 1: YU looking at marketing and technology. Tell us about that.
Speaker 1: So the dirty seer great a business school is that
Speaker 1: the second year is mostly a racket to try and
Speaker 1: get double the tuition because you really just need the
Speaker 1: first year. And by the way, that's the same racket
Speaker 1: with law school. You really only need the first two
Speaker 1: years to the third year is grav revenue for USMIL revenue.
Speaker 1: And my belief is that if we were honest, we
Speaker 1: would and focus on the kids economic security. We would
Speaker 1: teach four courses the second year, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google,
Speaker 1: because to understand those four companies is to understand media. Retail,
Speaker 1: the economy, society, etcetera. So I teach a session of
Speaker 1: my class called the four. I do a video on
Speaker 1: that class. I got a million views. Moon book. My
Speaker 1: most o the way, that's how I found you was
Speaker 1: the four Horseman of the Internet. Was one of your
Speaker 1: first videos? Like who is this guy? This is really
Speaker 1: fascinating stuff. Yeah that So I got one point one
Speaker 1: million views, approached by Penguin Portfolio random House, which rolls
Speaker 1: right off the tongue. Great, it's encouraging when you're when
Speaker 1: you're publisher, can't get their name right. But anyways, the
Speaker 1: most popular car This is a last session and it's
Speaker 1: where I take a bunch of great research out there
Speaker 1: and some of my own personal observations and experience, and
Speaker 1: I tried to distill best practices around creating an arc,
Speaker 1: an arc of satisfaction into some algorithms and some equations.
Speaker 1: And it's called the Algebra Happiness. It's my most popular session.
Speaker 1: Did a video two million views. Boom, next book and
Speaker 1: that next book is the Algebra of Happiness. So two
Speaker 1: million views? How many of those are people in the
Speaker 1: United States? How much of that is international? Who is
Speaker 1: watching a video called algebra of happiness. So I get
Speaker 1: this is weird. I get se mail and about eight
Speaker 1: percent of my audience is under the age of thirty five.
Speaker 1: So I appealed to UM young males, and I write
Speaker 1: a lot of this through the lens of the you
Speaker 1: know the individual that is just inherently, you know, kind
Speaker 1: of wrong when they show up, and that is a
Speaker 1: white heterosexual male and that's me so but yeah, I
Speaker 1: find there's an audience out there. I have a cottage
Speaker 1: industry and coaching and counseling the sons of my friends
Speaker 1: who are entering the workforce. But yeah, that's it's meant
Speaker 1: to be sort of okay. You think you come to
Speaker 1: business school for economic security, which you're really here for
Speaker 1: is to develop the skills and domain expertise such as
Speaker 1: can lead a rewarding life. And we go through these
Speaker 1: observations UM in the last class, and the kids seem
Speaker 1: to respond to it. So it's not about money. It's
Speaker 1: not about the pursuit of more. Although you talk about
Speaker 1: that UM in the book, there are some really pointing
Speaker 1: quotes that that stayed with me. Um. Every wellthy person
Speaker 1: I know measures their net worth and frightening detail, this
Speaker 1: doesn't sound like happiness. How much happiness does money really buy?
Speaker 1: So there is a correlation between money and happiness. Middle
Speaker 1: income people are happier than lower income people. The affluent
Speaker 1: are happier than middle income. But that's a bad news.
Speaker 1: There is a correlation. We live in a capitalist society.
Speaker 1: I believe that everyone has a responsibility to be economically sustained.
Speaker 1: A uh so bust. A move towards economic security is
Speaker 1: what I tell their kids. But once you get to
Speaker 1: economic security, housing, healthcare, I can absorb in economic shock,
Speaker 1: can take nice vacations, which, according to most data in
Speaker 1: most cities somewhere between a hundred and hundred fifty thousand
Speaker 1: dollars a year. I think in New York it's probably
Speaker 1: closer to seven dollars a year. But once you get
Speaker 1: to that point, the correlation between money or incremental revenue
Speaker 1: moneies and happiness flatlines. So the key is at that
Speaker 1: point in your life, once you get to economic security,
Speaker 1: if you're fortunate to get there, the money. Additional money
Speaker 1: is the ink in your pen, and that is it
Speaker 1: can write different stories. It can make the current chapters
Speaker 1: burn brighter, but it's not your story. There's also a
Speaker 1: myth that billionaires are less happy than millionaires. They're not,
Speaker 1: but they're no happier either. So there's a real skill
Speaker 1: to saying, at what point do you stop howling in
Speaker 1: the money storm and take pause and say, well, what
Speaker 1: gives me satisfaction? Why am I happy? Because more money
Speaker 1: won't give you more satisfaction. The terrible thing about a
Speaker 1: number is similar to what you know in that Great
Speaker 1: Star Wars episod where Luke Skywalker's trying it convinced Han
Speaker 1: Solo to rescue Princess Leah. He says, if you do this,
Speaker 1: you'll get more money than you'd ever imagine, and Han
Speaker 1: Solo response, I don't know. I can imagine a lot
Speaker 1: of money. So if I said to you Berry, I said,
Speaker 1: all right, what were goals when you were twenty two
Speaker 1: or twenty five? You said, well, by now, I would
Speaker 1: probably hope that I had a good relationship with my wife,
Speaker 1: some economic security, some relevance professionally, and good health. And
Speaker 1: I'm going to guess that you have most are all
Speaker 1: of those things, pretty much. But you you also know
Speaker 1: how much you're worth, or you know approximately how much
Speaker 1: you're worth, And it's pretty easy to imagine to five
Speaker 1: and ten x dot number. And this is you can't
Speaker 1: imagine ten x. You can imagine double, right, No, I
Speaker 1: can imagine tennant. You can imagine that you're a smart guy,
Speaker 1: you can imagine ten so, and that creates uh. You know,
Speaker 1: it's easy to stay on the spinning wheel and and
Speaker 1: or the hamster wheel. And I think it's important that
Speaker 1: we have the discipline to say, Okay, I need to
Speaker 1: at some point stop howling the money storm. If I'm
Speaker 1: fortunate enough to have met you know, more than my
Speaker 1: basic needs, and figure out what really is meaningful to me.
Speaker 1: That's interesting. I know that I've made a number of
Speaker 1: choices career wise where I've turned down more money that
Speaker 1: I knew was just going to be a miserable slog
Speaker 1: for what I think is a pretty reasonable lifestyle and
Speaker 1: a pretty I mean, I work a lot, but my
Speaker 1: wife calls me gainfully unemployed. I would be doing the
Speaker 1: same thing whether someone's paying me or not. So there
Speaker 1: are choices you can make to not take the bigger,
Speaker 1: higher paying but horrific, soul sucking job and and just
Speaker 1: pursue something. I like to think we're making a difference
Speaker 1: in what we do that we're if we're not denting
Speaker 1: the universe like Steve Jobs. At least we're having a
Speaker 1: positive impact on people. Yeah, well, solgon reverse order. Steve
Speaker 1: Jobs denied his blood under oath so he could avoid
Speaker 1: child support payments um a court of a billion dollars.
Speaker 1: So you know we need more engaged fathers, not a
Speaker 1: better damn phone. But anyways, be that as a made
Speaker 1: So you brought up the notion of turning down money
Speaker 1: to pursue stuff that you would enjoy more. Thinks there's
Speaker 1: a larger purpose. All that's important. However, However, I think
Speaker 1: some of the worst advice that kids get it stern.
Speaker 1: We invite two types of speakers. We have three speakers
Speaker 1: a week for luncheon speakers, and it's either super interesting
Speaker 1: people are billionaires. We have decided that if you've aggregated
Speaker 1: a billion dollars, and you must be able to apply
Speaker 1: on almost anything including life spirituality, you know you're you're
Speaker 1: the master of all things because you've aggregated a billion dollars.
Speaker 1: And they end with what I think is some of
Speaker 1: the worst advice for most of the time, and that
Speaker 1: is they tell the kids all one thing, and what
Speaker 1: is that one thing? Follow your dream, follow your passion,
Speaker 1: go for it. Such incredible bs because the guy I
Speaker 1: tell people, if someone tells you to follow their passion,
Speaker 1: your passion, it means they're already rich. And the guy
Speaker 1: on stage telling you that is probably made his money
Speaker 1: in iron or smelting, so not exactly a passionate. There
Speaker 1: you go. So what I think are my advice to kids,
Speaker 1: when I say kids young adults is find something your
Speaker 1: job is gonna find your passion your job, find what
Speaker 1: you're good at, and then invest the requisite great perseverance, frustration,
Speaker 1: endurance around and the injustice that is called the workplace
Speaker 1: and become great at it. And the accouterments of being
Speaker 1: great at it, economic security, the respect to your colleagues,
Speaker 1: the camaraderie you develop with people in the agency of
Speaker 1: greatness will make you passionate about whatever it is. But
Speaker 1: the problem with telling young people to follow their passion
Speaker 1: is what ends up happening is work gets hard. It
Speaker 1: does for everybody, and they think, well, maybe I'm not
Speaker 1: successful here. I don't love it, so it must not
Speaker 1: be my passion. I should move on. No, that's called work.
Speaker 1: You can't hate it. I hated investment banking, and I
Speaker 1: was no good at it, so that was a sign
Speaker 1: to get out. But the idea that you know, jay
Speaker 1: Z followed his passion and as a billionaire, assume you
Speaker 1: are not jay Z. Assume that like most people, you're
Speaker 1: gonna have to find something you're good at, invest a
Speaker 1: ton of time, and become great at it. I have
Speaker 1: to reference a disclaimer you have fairly early in the book.
Speaker 1: You write, I have no academic credibility or credentials to
Speaker 1: indicate I should counsel people on how to live their lives.
Speaker 1: So why did you write this? So this is in
Speaker 1: a journey of personal discovery. We were talking about this
Speaker 1: off Mike. I struggle from what I would loosely call
Speaker 1: mild depression and issues with anger. And my sister summarized
Speaker 1: the problem perfectly a couple of years ago when I
Speaker 1: was speaking to her, she said, why are you so
Speaker 1: piste off all the time? And when I look at
Speaker 1: my blessings and I look at my mood, they don't
Speaker 1: foot to one another. And I decided that I would
Speaker 1: do some research around what are the best practices around
Speaker 1: people who are able to take stock of their blessings
Speaker 1: and translate that to their mood and their satisfaction with
Speaker 1: their own life. And there's a tremendous amount of great
Speaker 1: research out there. There's best practices, there's worst practices, and
Speaker 1: I try and summarize them for the kids and turn
Speaker 1: it into a class. But it's also been, you know,
Speaker 1: a great personal journey for me to try and figure out, Okay,
Speaker 1: how can I ensure that I take that again, my
Speaker 1: blessings foot to my mood so on that. There's a
Speaker 1: huge body of research about the positive power of gratitude.
Speaker 1: You discussed that in the book How how does one
Speaker 1: live a more grateful life? Well, they're supposedly tricks, and
Speaker 1: one of them is just writing them down. Suppose we
Speaker 1: write them down, they cement them. But I think there's
Speaker 1: other things too. I think with especially with men, we
Speaker 1: have a problem communicating admiration and affection for other people.
Speaker 1: As young men, especially when I grew up in the
Speaker 1: seventies and eighties, affection meant one or two things. You
Speaker 1: were trying to have sex with that person, or you
Speaker 1: were a homosexual. And in the seventies or eighties, for
Speaker 1: a head of sexual man, both of those things were
Speaker 1: considered either suspect or a bad thing. Right, So times
Speaker 1: have changed, and I think affection if you look at mammals,
Speaker 1: if you look at where we're happiest, if you look
Speaker 1: at what we're meant to do, we're pack animals and
Speaker 1: we're meant to touch each other. Now, unfortunately, because of
Speaker 1: just some outrageous and criminal behavior in the workplace, we've
Speaker 1: conflated masculinity with toxicity, and we've said affection in the
Speaker 1: workplace is a bad thing. And I understand that, but
Speaker 1: I think men need to take back affection and be
Speaker 1: affectionate with their children, expressive affection to their friends. And
Speaker 1: the reality is it just doesn't take a ton of
Speaker 1: common sense to recognize and affection isn't welcome, but affection
Speaker 1: is a wonderful thing. And also just verbal admiration. Like Barry,
Speaker 1: I think you're an impressive guy. I think you have
Speaker 1: a really interesting career, and I love the fact that
Speaker 1: you talk about your hobbies. You just seem like you
Speaker 1: just seem like a guy that would be a great
Speaker 1: mentor a great uncle, the guy people want to hang
Speaker 1: out with. Saying that most men, when they say that,
Speaker 1: feel as if they're giving up something. That admiration is
Speaker 1: a currency that when I say that that it somehow
Speaker 1: takes that away from me, especially young men. So what
Speaker 1: I encourage people to do our young men is to say, look,
Speaker 1: one of the greatest things that can take you off
Speaker 1: track is that don't assume that people in your life
Speaker 1: are telepathic. Thinking loving thoughts about your friends and family
Speaker 1: doesn't make you a loving person. You have to express
Speaker 1: these things. And the greatest untapped resource in the world
Speaker 1: is the good things you feel about other people that
Speaker 1: you don't articulate. We assume that people telepathically understand that
Speaker 1: we admire them, that we respect them, that we're fond
Speaker 1: of them. And I think the fastest way to increase
Speaker 1: your short term happiness is to find the courage too
Speaker 1: when you when you feel good things about other people,
Speaker 1: to express them. And quite frankly, it's a little bit embarrassing.
Speaker 1: You make yourself vulnerable. Sometimes it can even be off
Speaker 1: putting to the other person. But on the whole, I
Speaker 1: think it's one of the greatest hacks to feeling more
Speaker 1: grateful and being more happy. It's just expressing all the
Speaker 1: good thoughts that run between your ears every day. So
Speaker 1: you're suggesting an individual can decide to be happy, can
Speaker 1: decide to be grateful can implement hacks in order to
Speaker 1: achieve that state. So I think there are best practices,
Speaker 1: and I don't think there's an equation, and I also
Speaker 1: don't I want to I want to be I wanna
Speaker 1: disclose that. I think there are certain forms of depression
Speaker 1: and erosies that require outside intervention, but there are through
Speaker 1: and there is no one equation. So the title is
Speaker 1: a little bit misleading. One happiness is a sensation. We
Speaker 1: were talking about conomen before. When I'm really talking about
Speaker 1: is the decisions and investments you make through the course
Speaker 1: of your life such that the ark or the narrative
Speaker 1: of your life is a little bit more satisfying, and
Speaker 1: the highs and lows that we all experience swing on
Speaker 1: a higher plane. I don't think there's any one equation.
Speaker 1: People have to find their own route. But there are
Speaker 1: best and worst practices. So the Harvard Grand Study, largest
Speaker 1: study of its kind on happiness, found worst and best
Speaker 1: tracked Freman over seventy five years, over eighty years. And
Speaker 1: it's interesting started, I think in the twenties, and what
Speaker 1: which gives you sort of insight into the way we
Speaker 1: thought about people and what was important in the twenties
Speaker 1: we decided to track four hundred men, right like who
Speaker 1: shows about women's happiness? And no women, of course is
Speaker 1: surprised by that. And we waited until we tracked them
Speaker 1: for eighty years or that scientists tracked them for eighty
Speaker 1: years everything they ate, what they did at work, all
Speaker 1: of their relationships, their sporting activity or lack thereof their media,
Speaker 1: and then queried them on a regular basis their levels
Speaker 1: of happiness and satisfaction. And then aggregated the largest data
Speaker 1: set on longitudinal happiness ever and then said, what are
Speaker 1: the best practices among the people who are happiest or
Speaker 1: seem more satisfied? What are the worst practices among people
Speaker 1: who seem less satisfied? One and they had to swap
Speaker 1: out four principal scientists. So let's start with the worst practice,
Speaker 1: the one thing that was prevalent or consistent most often
Speaker 1: across the cohort with the lowest level of happiness. And
Speaker 1: he guesses alcohol. Alcohol, And that surprised me. And by
Speaker 1: the way, this is like what I call it, do
Speaker 1: what I say, not what I do. I love alcohol.
Speaker 1: I feel as if I've gotten more out of alcohol
Speaker 1: than it's gotten out of me. A great Churchill quote.
Speaker 1: Although although you write in the book that in your
Speaker 1: twenties and thirties alcohol mess with you, Yeah it did,
Speaker 1: it did, And I'll come back to that. But basically,
Speaker 1: alcohol was seen in a lot of instances as ruining relationships,
Speaker 1: taking people's health off track, careers coming undone. Uh. And
Speaker 1: when I when I look back when I first moved
Speaker 1: to New York in the eighties and I took a
Speaker 1: job with Morgan Stanley, every night, I'd go out and
Speaker 1: get pretty much, you know, drunk with other people that
Speaker 1: felt like they were successful, had a cool place downtown,
Speaker 1: and it had sort of the sort of call artificial
Speaker 1: relevance and fabulousness to it. And I found that over
Speaker 1: time I was less effective at work. I lost touch
Speaker 1: with a lot of people. I was investing in relationships
Speaker 1: with my family, and I decided after two years of
Speaker 1: that that I was just going to dial it back.
Speaker 1: And the problem I find with young people is that
Speaker 1: their litmus tests or whether they have a problem with substances,
Speaker 1: as they say, am I addicted? Have I had an intervention?
Speaker 1: Am I living under a bridge? And if they have
Speaker 1: a job and they're well liked and they're doing well,
Speaker 1: they think I don't have a problem with substances, but
Speaker 1: it's not that black and white. There are nuances here,
Speaker 1: and eight of substance abusers are functioning substance abusers. The
Speaker 1: better question is if I dialed down X, Y, and
Speaker 1: Z substances, whether it's trans fats, whether it's alcohol, whether
Speaker 1: it's pot, whether it's shopping, would I just be better
Speaker 1: at a bunch of things? And what I counsel my
Speaker 1: kids on or my students is take stock of every
Speaker 1: external substance and imagine you did a half two thirds more.
Speaker 1: Because there's also I think this narrative it has to
Speaker 1: be zero or one. You either have to totally give
Speaker 1: it up or you don't have a problem. Everything in moderation.
Speaker 1: But for me it was something where I felt a
Speaker 1: lot healthier, a lot better on. But yeah, that's definitely
Speaker 1: the one thing they found happiness the best practice if
Speaker 1: there is a hack, and of course the students, I
Speaker 1: want to get to. The one thing is they found
Speaker 1: that the cohort that was happiest. It was pretty pretty straightforward.
Speaker 1: It was based on the depth and number of meaningful
Speaker 1: relationships in their lives at work. Do you feel respect
Speaker 1: and admired and do you respect and admire other people?
Speaker 1: Amongst your friends, do you get a sense of camaraderie
Speaker 1: enjoy and do they sense camaraderie enjoy from you? And
Speaker 1: at home, amongst your family, do you feel an intense
Speaker 1: level of support and love? And just as importantly, do
Speaker 1: you know they feel that sense of love and joy
Speaker 1: from you? In this sense? The Harvard Grant study burned
Speaker 1: through four principal sciences because they kept dying over the
Speaker 1: course of those eight years. Summarize this, you know, hundreds
Speaker 1: something paid report and it has the best opening line
Speaker 1: of any academic study to summarize the findings, and it's
Speaker 1: the following, happiness is love, full stop. And that is
Speaker 1: the one thing we find across almost all these studies
Speaker 1: on happiness that it's the ability to invest in and
Speaker 1: maintain deep, meaningful relationships across your friends and at work
Speaker 1: and at home. Let's talk about those students. And I
Speaker 1: want to reference something in the book that I thought
Speaker 1: was fascinating. There's a chart, effectively that looks like a
Speaker 1: smile that shows where people in their life cycle are
Speaker 1: happiness when they're young and when they're old. Tell us
Speaker 1: about that. Yeah, it's difficult This is just gore. It's
Speaker 1: gorgeous data because across all studies and across cutting across
Speaker 1: ethnic groups, uh income, cohorts, cultures, we found or they
Speaker 1: find something very similar, and that is people are generally
Speaker 1: happiest in the beginning and the ends of the lives.
Speaker 1: And that is from zero to twenty five, it's the
Speaker 1: stuff of Disneyland, your first car, exploration of self, spilling
Speaker 1: into adulthood, football games, you know, just magic, right, and
Speaker 1: then kind of from twenty to forty five, that's what
Speaker 1: I call the life gets real phase, and that is
Speaker 1: you find that you're not going to have a fragrance
Speaker 1: named after, You're likely not going to be a senator,
Speaker 1: someone you love get sick and dies. Having children is stressful.
Speaker 1: What's interesting we don't like to talk about is that
Speaker 1: when we survey or when they survey people with kids
Speaker 1: and without kids, on average, the people without kids are
Speaker 1: actually happier, not that kids without kids. It is surprising.
Speaker 1: Now at the end of life, people consistently say, we
Speaker 1: have a hormone that releases that erases the bad times,
Speaker 1: and we feel more rewarding and more fulfilled having had kids,
Speaker 1: But during it they're less happy. It's stressful. Kids are stressful.
Speaker 1: They put economic pressure on you. You know, one of
Speaker 1: my favorite things is, you know, kids ruin everything. Babies
Speaker 1: are awful, and they get less awful, but still it's
Speaker 1: kids are Kids are difficult. So you have and then
Speaker 1: you find it you face economic stress usually at some
Speaker 1: point in your life with the cycles, and you find
Speaker 1: you wake up oftentimes sometimes forty five and you're disappointed.
Speaker 1: We have a tendency to anchor off the most successful
Speaker 1: person we know. We have a tendency to believe what
Speaker 1: college and our parents told us that we can be anything,
Speaker 1: which is this is why Facebook Instagram is so toxic. Well,
Speaker 1: it's especially toxic because again we have this wonderful competitiveness
Speaker 1: gene that ensures that the next generation will be taller, faster, smart, stronger,
Speaker 1: and by anchoring and aspiring off the most successful person
Speaker 1: we do that has a very positive evolutionary benefit, but
Speaker 1: it also makes us feel bad about ourselves. And the
Speaker 1: thing about Instagram is that these people become somewhat relatable
Speaker 1: and along the Bhutan, who I think is going to
Speaker 1: go down? It's one of the more interesting thinkers, says
Speaker 1: Envy is a function of familiarity, so we don't envy
Speaker 1: the queen. We don't say, oh, I wish I were
Speaker 1: the queen. I wish I were rolling around in that carriage.
Speaker 1: But on Instagram, you not only see what you're missing
Speaker 1: out on, you see it play out in real time
Speaker 1: amongst your friends, and it's kind of their success is
Speaker 1: shoved in your face, especially among young people who are
Speaker 1: unable to really to really modulate that. But forty five
Speaker 1: are usually is usually your least happiest time, and then
Speaker 1: something wonderful happens in your fifties and in your or
Speaker 1: younger if your soulful, and you start finding appreciation and
Speaker 1: joy in places you didn't find it before. I used
Speaker 1: to serve when I was younger because I thought I
Speaker 1: was cool. Now I'm kind of fascinated by the idea
Speaker 1: I can be out there. I wouldn't even call it
Speaker 1: surfing anymore. It's me clean to a piece of fiberglass
Speaker 1: for dear life. But the fact that several thousand tons
Speaker 1: will emerge because of the geometry of the sand floor
Speaker 1: and the way the sun feels and the I mean,
Speaker 1: you just you're just joyous, right, these small things that
Speaker 1: look like you called children become more joyous. You maybe
Speaker 1: take stock your blessings, maybe have a little bit of
Speaker 1: economic security. You realize life is finite. You appreciate your health,
Speaker 1: You find joy and things you'd never find joy in
Speaker 1: nature or art, and you get happier. And the cohort
Speaker 1: that is happiest would logically be the cohort that should
Speaker 1: be the least happy. And that's people who start to
Speaker 1: have their health fail, and that as seniors who are
Speaker 1: consistently the happiest. So the advice here is simple, and
Speaker 1: your twenties and thirties among people who are having a
Speaker 1: tough time, and that is this is a this is
Speaker 1: a normal part of the journey, and the keys to
Speaker 1: keep on keeping on the happiness waits for you. Let's
Speaker 1: let's roll back from the fifties, sixties and and later
Speaker 1: years to those thirties and forties you right the book,
Speaker 1: this is the time of your life where you have
Speaker 1: to make your bones, where you're gonna work hard, You're
Speaker 1: gonna put in a lot of hours, but you need
Speaker 1: to do that during those decades. So so the future
Speaker 1: and happiness arises. Explain that. So I survey the kids again,
Speaker 1: the students about where how much money they expect to
Speaker 1: be making in ten, twenty, and thirty years, and nine
Speaker 1: plus percent of them expect to be in the top one.
Speaker 1: So granted, this is selection bias because the second year
Speaker 1: of business school in New York, the average salary coming
Speaker 1: out of school is a D eighteen thousand, which is
Speaker 1: a lot of money that already the meeting across the
Speaker 1: already puts them in kind of percentile, and they expect
Speaker 1: to be in the n by the time they're thirty
Speaker 1: five or forty. And my observation, and I believe there's
Speaker 1: data back this up, is that if you expect to
Speaker 1: be in the percentile, balance is a myth. And we
Speaker 1: all know somebody who's good looking, in great shape, has
Speaker 1: good relationships with their parents, donates time at the A
Speaker 1: s p c A, and has a food block. Assume
Speaker 1: you are not that person, unless you're smart enough to
Speaker 1: inherit a lot of money. If you expect to be
Speaker 1: in the top economic weight class, you should expect to
Speaker 1: do not much else other than focus on your career
Speaker 1: in your twenties and thirties. And by the way, I
Speaker 1: want to acknowledge, that's not the road to happiness for everybody.
Speaker 1: A lot of people say, I'm not going to howl
Speaker 1: in the money storm. I'm gonna find a way to
Speaker 1: lower my burn and I'm not gonna let money dictate
Speaker 1: my happiness. We live in a capitalist society, and most
Speaker 1: of the people we know have decided that they want
Speaker 1: a certain level of economic securities and success, and it
Speaker 1: has to be an honest conversation with yourself. In my
Speaker 1: twenties and thirties, I don't I don't know about you, Barry.
Speaker 1: I don't remember much else than working, and I want
Speaker 1: to be clear, I came at a price. I'm bald,
Speaker 1: I burned through my first marriage, and I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: totally advocate personal responsibility for those failures. But I think
Speaker 1: a lot of it was the fact that for two
Speaker 1: decades I was very focused on economic security and not
Speaker 1: much else. So I think young people just have an
Speaker 1: honest I have to have an honest conversation because we're
Speaker 1: told when we're young, you can have it all. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I'm not here with a message of hope.
Speaker 1: It's difficult to have it all and there everything is
Speaker 1: a trade off. So I have a lot of balance
Speaker 1: now as you do, because I didn't have very much
Speaker 1: when I was young, and that was a conscious decision
Speaker 1: I made, quite quite interesting. So we talked a bit
Speaker 1: about technology. Let's get into some of the details about this,
Speaker 1: because your your previous book obviously um delved into some areas.
Speaker 1: You made some bold forecasts, some of which were incredibly pressing.
Speaker 1: In you said a year ahead of time, Hey, Amazon
Speaker 1: should buy Whole Foods, will give him a giant footprint,
Speaker 1: blah blah blah, and and they did. Were you at
Speaker 1: all surprised by this whole Amazon HQ debacle? Well, so look,
Speaker 1: and I'm I'm boasting here, But at the beginning of
Speaker 1: two thousand and eighteen, I said, this isn't a contest,
Speaker 1: It's a count, and that is I've been on seven
Speaker 1: public company boards, a dozen private company boards, and I've
Speaker 1: been through four headquarter relocations, and in retrospect, it all
Speaker 1: came down to one thing, and that is where the
Speaker 1: CEO wanted to spend more time, where he was here,
Speaker 1: she was president of their golf club, or where his
Speaker 1: next wife was living. When you are a fifty five
Speaker 1: year old man where a hundred billion dollars, it means
Speaker 1: that you have more options than anyone in the world,
Speaker 1: and you are the master of no so queering me.
Speaker 1: This a guy who is fifty five or D five
Speaker 1: billion dollars, Is he going to spend twelve minutes, much
Speaker 1: less twelve weeks in Indianapolis. Is the wealthiest man in
Speaker 1: the world going to decide to roll in Columbus, Ohio?
Speaker 1: And this is the sophisticated analysis I did Bury. The
Speaker 1: bezos have four homes, one in Seattle, one in l A,
Speaker 1: one on the Upper east Side, and one in Calorama.
Speaker 1: D C. L A made no sense because they couldn't
Speaker 1: justify that, because geographically would make no sense to have
Speaker 1: a headquarters just down the coast. So I said on Fox,
Speaker 1: CNN and CNBC, this is all of rous. They have
Speaker 1: gamified this to extract a pound of flesh from municipal police, fire,
Speaker 1: and school departments and transfer it to Amazon shareholders. They
Speaker 1: have absolutely no intention of going anywhere but d C
Speaker 1: in New York. And I was wrong. It was both right,
Speaker 1: You said DC or New York said DC or New York,
Speaker 1: and I was wrong. They picked both. This wasn't a contest,
Speaker 1: It was a conum. By the way, while I'm on
Speaker 1: a riff, you remember that terrible imagery that they are
Speaker 1: that kind of race baiting that Reagan engaged in the
Speaker 1: image of a welfare mother. He had a welfare queen right,
Speaker 1: the cadillac an individual gaming the system right and taking
Speaker 1: our tax dollars for their own benefit. The mother of
Speaker 1: all welfare queens is Jeff Bezos because he never sells
Speaker 1: his stock, triggering a capital game, meaning he never ever
Speaker 1: leaks taxes, never pays taxes. So how does he finance
Speaker 1: his lifestyle? Barry? He brows money at one and a
Speaker 1: half to two and a half percent against his stock
Speaker 1: at JP Morgan, and then sevent of every subsidy given
Speaker 1: to Amazon, whether they located a data center or a headquarter,
Speaker 1: goes into his pocket. So if you looked at our
Speaker 1: economy with twenty trillion dollars five trillion government six billion
Speaker 1: goes in the military or whatever is to social security,
Speaker 1: an outflow is to the wealthiest man in the world.
Speaker 1: Jeff Bezos is a is literally the mother of all
Speaker 1: welfare queens, and Alexa is this a good thing? So
Speaker 1: let me push back on that little bit, because I
Speaker 1: I am no strangers to corporate welfare queens, and to me,
Speaker 1: the biggest defenders are the Walmarts and the McDonald's, the
Speaker 1: companies who have gains of the system, right, the ones
Speaker 1: who figured out how to charge, how to pay as
Speaker 1: little as they possibly can. And remember a couple of
Speaker 1: years ago, McDonald's literally had a Mick helpline so that
Speaker 1: they could get their employees on food stamps and aid
Speaker 1: to dependent children. And when you look at the highest
Speaker 1: employers of government assistant on a state by state basis,
Speaker 1: it's invariably Walmart and and or McDonald's. Now, over the
Speaker 1: past five years, they've improved a lot. I can't blame
Speaker 1: Bezos for a not showing a profit by reinvesting their money.
Speaker 1: They purposefully are low profit company. No profits mean no taxes,
Speaker 1: and be if he chooses not to sell his stock again,
Speaker 1: I can't push back too hard on that. But the
Speaker 1: point that, hey, you're the wealthiest man in the world,
Speaker 1: this is one of the highest market cap one of
Speaker 1: three biggest market cap companies in the world. Pay your
Speaker 1: fair share of tax that that nobody can argue with.
Speaker 1: So you said a lot there, And I think at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, we have to have greater
Speaker 1: minimum wage. It hasn't kept pace with inflation and Walmart
Speaker 1: and all of these companies should be probably paying more money,
Speaker 1: and the government should be paying less to such that
Speaker 1: these people can survive. I acknowledge the point now, whether
Speaker 1: or not it's what is worse, having billions or tens
Speaker 1: of billions of dollars spread across longcome people or the
Speaker 1: working poor, or going out to the wealthiest man in
Speaker 1: the world. I would argue that the latter is worse.
Speaker 1: I don't think Jeff Bezos is doing anything wrong. I
Speaker 1: think the man in the mirror. The guilty party here
Speaker 1: is you and me who haven't elected officials who are
Speaker 1: smart enough to recognize that the markets have gone through
Speaker 1: a fundamental shift. And when a company can become the
Speaker 1: third most valuable company in the world and is on
Speaker 1: its way to becoming the most valuable company on the world,
Speaker 1: when it can effectively pay no taxes because the markets
Speaker 1: don't demand profits or meaningful profits, we have an economic
Speaker 1: and taxation construct that no longer works for our society.
Speaker 1: We can have a functioning economy when the most successful
Speaker 1: company in the world, Amazon pays one point four billion
Speaker 1: in taxes since two thousand and eight, and Walmart has
Speaker 1: paid sixty four billion. I'm not saying they've done anything wrong,
Speaker 1: but our economy can operate so even in France, and
Speaker 1: we immediately think that any idea from anywhere else is
Speaker 1: socialist or stupid. That we have we have a monopoly
Speaker 1: on good ideas. But Frances basically said, look, we give
Speaker 1: up your tax lawyers are smarter than our tax authorities,
Speaker 1: so we're gonna tax you on your top line revenues.
Speaker 1: Brazil is doing the same thing. In Britain. Google registers
Speaker 1: about six billions sterling in business every year, and for
Speaker 1: the purposes of profitability and taxation, they report a fifty
Speaker 1: thou pound prof it every year on a product that's
Speaker 1: got to be on sick note ten billions or seven
Speaker 1: and a half, right, what seven? So about seven point
Speaker 1: six billion, and they've decided what they report to the
Speaker 1: government that can be taxes fifty thou pounds. And it's
Speaker 1: expensive to do business in London, it's not that expensive.
Speaker 1: So we are in a system now where when you
Speaker 1: have the most successful company in the world not paying taxes,
Speaker 1: when you have companies that game the system and can
Speaker 1: avoid the avoid taxes by locating in the Isle of Jersey.
Speaker 1: Apple's international headquarters is in a small, small island off
Speaker 1: the British coast. I mean this is this is arguably
Speaker 1: these companies are not only masters of technology or masters
Speaker 1: in business, or masters of tax avoidance. And we haven't
Speaker 1: elected elected officials that that acknowledge and will counter what
Speaker 1: is a regressive tax, and that is the most successful people,
Speaker 1: the most successful companies pay less taxes, and taxation is
Speaker 1: largely a zero sum game, which means the following small
Speaker 1: and medium sized companies have to pay more. So we
Speaker 1: have basically said, all right, if you win the law
Speaker 1: and lower in middle income people affect. So this is
Speaker 1: we have. We have institutionalized a regressive corporate tax structure
Speaker 1: and and that's problematic. And to go to your point
Speaker 1: that Amazon headquarters search was a con today. Just today
Speaker 1: we learned that they're looking to take fifty or a
Speaker 1: hundred thousand space feet of space in Manhattan, regardless for offices.
Speaker 1: Thing was just a nonsensus. They need to be at
Speaker 1: this location, they need to have access to the talents
Speaker 1: or whatever else is here. And the whole thing was
Speaker 1: just I think this reflects poorl I think this reflects
Speaker 1: that the board of Amazon and Jeff Bezos black character
Speaker 1: and code, because this was nothing but an elegant transfer
Speaker 1: of funds from municipal fire, police and school districts into
Speaker 1: the shareholders pockets of Amazon shareholders. To their credit, Google
Speaker 1: and Apple are all both adding thousands of jobs in
Speaker 1: New York. Why we have three world class universities here.
Speaker 1: It's a fantastic place to do business. And you know
Speaker 1: what that comes at a cost. The worst poker players
Speaker 1: in the world build a Blasio and in Governor Cuomo,
Speaker 1: they were always coming here. They were always coming here.
Speaker 1: And even when they pulled out and said, oh we're
Speaker 1: angry now, they're coming here. They're just doing it quietly.
Speaker 1: Because bottom line, the wealthiest man in the world doesn't
Speaker 1: need to commute to Ohio. He's not going to. So
Speaker 1: let's talk about a couple of our other favorite tech companies.
Speaker 1: UM I read something fascinating, actually emailed you the story
Speaker 1: about we Work and their new investment subsidiary that's gonna
Speaker 1: buy the buildings that they're gonna sublet. Now, I haven't
Speaker 1: brought into we Work as a Ponzi scheme, although and
Speaker 1: I know you've said some harsh things about them, but
Speaker 1: the idea that they're going to invest in the buildings
Speaker 1: that they then sublet to themselves starts to smell like
Speaker 1: old cheese a little bit. Yeah, it's so Look, the
Speaker 1: most overvalued private company until about two months ago was Uber,
Speaker 1: and they were claiming that they were worth a hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty billion dollars. Now they're not even worth six
Speaker 1: year seventy. This company could execute perfectly and still be
Speaker 1: cut in half in terms of any reasonable memo. Do
Speaker 1: you agree that they waited too long to go public
Speaker 1: and left so much value on the table because they
Speaker 1: got greedy or I think that they should have never
Speaker 1: gone public and the private markets are now more amenable
Speaker 1: to companies like this, And essentially here's a better prediction.
Speaker 1: Everyone talks about is Uber or Tests are going out
Speaker 1: of business. I think the NASTACK and the NYC are
Speaker 1: going out of business. We'll come back to that roll
Speaker 1: roll back a sec. Uber which has thirty of forty
Speaker 1: billion in venture capital, How do they not go public?
Speaker 1: There's no exit for tons and tons of vcs who
Speaker 1: aren't looking for five percent a year for a million
Speaker 1: years their secondary markets. Now in the private markets, there's
Speaker 1: liquidity in the private markets and never used to be
Speaker 1: not dollars worth not a hundred. Yeah, they raised eight
Speaker 1: that's a fair point. They probably can raise a billion.
Speaker 1: But there were secondary trades taking place, their secondary trades
Speaker 1: right now and in in stocks, and and you know
Speaker 1: you can buy shares in most private companies now with
Speaker 1: secondary there's liquidity. Now again the retail investor who loses,
Speaker 1: the retail investor now gets to buy stuff when it's
Speaker 1: totally overvalued. And there's no other source of that kind
Speaker 1: of capital. But going back to the most now, the
Speaker 1: most overvalued private company in the world is we Work.
Speaker 1: Supposedly it's being valued at forty billion dollars. I think
Speaker 1: they did two billion in revenue and loss too. I
Speaker 1: mean this, and they have their own metrics. They call it, hey,
Speaker 1: that's margin there, and they call it community based EBITA.
Speaker 1: So and if you do the analysis, and one guy,
Speaker 1: I think maybe even you're a Bloomberg did the analys
Speaker 1: and said, based on this valuation, the floor that we
Speaker 1: Work leases is now worth more than the building, the
Speaker 1: whole building, right. So, and you have you have a
Speaker 1: company sort of investing long, taking out ten year leases
Speaker 1: and then going short on its revenue because which and
Speaker 1: that's the value is there are being a demand around
Speaker 1: short term supply stops and they're in trouble, huge trouble.
Speaker 1: And even again, if this company executes perfectly, it's not
Speaker 1: worth I mean, it's a Regius with I P a beer,
Speaker 1: Remember Regis, It's it's cooler. It's a great concept. They've
Speaker 1: built a great brand. You know, I think you and
Speaker 1: I could probably be a great brand around a two
Speaker 1: billion dollar business. If we're allowed to lose two billion dollars.
Speaker 1: This company is a train wreck in terms of evaluation. Really,
Speaker 1: what's gonna happen with the I P O? Will there
Speaker 1: be an IPO that It'll be really interesting to see
Speaker 1: if we work and get out. I wonder if the
Speaker 1: marketplace is starting to exit the concentral hallucination between Unicorn
Speaker 1: status and all these B S words. I like to
Speaker 1: do a word cloud across every perspective and then lift
Speaker 1: a Nuber. You saw things like networking effect, flywheel effect,
Speaker 1: autonomous driving. First off, there's no evidence that autonomous driving
Speaker 1: will be either good nor bad for Uber and left.
Speaker 1: It just means they don't have to pay the drivers
Speaker 1: pay a little more for the car and they drive.
Speaker 1: But quite frankly, their economic advantages they've figured out a
Speaker 1: way to find four million people who will work for
Speaker 1: below minimum wage. That's not a good thing. It's about
Speaker 1: what about four million cars for zero age? But who
Speaker 1: garners the economic value there? It'll be the engineers that
Speaker 1: create that technology. And why is that going to be
Speaker 1: Uber and not Google, which is the greatest concentration of
Speaker 1: i Q Ever, anyways, I think you could argue both ways.
Speaker 1: What's going to happen there. What Uber has been able
Speaker 1: to figure out is a flywheel effect, and that is
Speaker 1: has launched a new business on this incredible platform, Uber eats,
Speaker 1: because there's real value in Uber. It's a global brand.
Speaker 1: It's typically the first in the last brand the global
Speaker 1: affluent interact with when they're in a foreign city. They've
Speaker 1: got tremendous data, they've got a fantastic brand, a culture
Speaker 1: of innovation. There's a lot of things they could do there.
Speaker 1: So if they execute perfectly, they're only going to be
Speaker 1: worth what BMW is worth, which is around thirty billion dollars,
Speaker 1: or the stocks going to get cut in half. The
Speaker 1: company that could go to zero if they don't get
Speaker 1: acquired is Lift. There is no network effect there, there's
Speaker 1: no global brand, there's no flywheel effect. It's just a
Speaker 1: company hemorrhaging money. You don't think that there will be
Speaker 1: space in the in the market for a number two.
Speaker 1: To Uber is number one, I don't. Here's the thing
Speaker 1: about so it's easy to talk down stocks. A company
Speaker 1: that I think is undervalued is Airbnb, because what you
Speaker 1: need with Airbnb is you need local you need local supply,
Speaker 1: you need apartments. In the same way with right hailing,
Speaker 1: you need local supply, you need drivers in Cleveland. But
Speaker 1: with right hailing, all you need is local demand, and
Speaker 1: that is you and I could start a right hailing
Speaker 1: company here in New York and create demand and supply.
Speaker 1: With Airbnb, you need local supply, but you need global demands.
Speaker 1: The majority of people coming into Cleveland are from Scandinavia
Speaker 1: and Cape Town and all all manner of sitason around
Speaker 1: the world, so they have extraordinary moat around their business.
Speaker 1: But ride hailing has very few moats, low entry, a
Speaker 1: lot of local players. It's a price war. They convinced
Speaker 1: the consumer that twenty dollars worth of service is worth
Speaker 1: fourteen dollars. They're not afraid to go after each other.
Speaker 1: They have a decent amount of cheap capital. This is
Speaker 1: going to get very ugly. So Lift I think that's
Speaker 1: either Lift gets maybe bought at some point, but you
Speaker 1: can imagine Lift going to zero. There's real value in Uber,
Speaker 1: real value, maybe even twenty or thirty billion dollars in value,
Speaker 1: but at sixty that I have a difficult time making
Speaker 1: the argument for how this company in any way justifies
Speaker 1: that type of job. We have been speaking with Professor
Speaker 1: Scott Galloway of n y U Stern. If you enjoy
Speaker 1: this conversation, well, be sure and come back for the
Speaker 1: podcast extras, where we keep the tapes rolling and continue
Speaker 1: discussing all things technology and happiness related. We love your comments,
Speaker 1: feedback and suggestions right to us at m IB podcast
Speaker 1: at Bloomberg dot net. Be sure to check out my
Speaker 1: daily column. You can find that on Bloomberg dot com.
Speaker 1: Follow me on Twitter at rit Halts. I'm Barry Reholts.
Speaker 1: You're listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the podcast, Scott, Thanks so much for doing this.
Speaker 1: I have to tell you I I plowed through the
Speaker 1: book over the holiday weekend. I found it like just
Speaker 1: a fun fast read. It was literally sitting on the
Speaker 1: beach out in the Hampton's and I really enjoyed it. Um,
Speaker 1: I'm shocked at how revealing you are in the book.
Speaker 1: You you basically say here, I'm naked, warts and all. Um,
Speaker 1: that's a challenging thing to do. Yeah. What I found, though, Barry,
Speaker 1: is that when you when you when you're authentic and
Speaker 1: you try and be open about like I'm very good
Speaker 1: at talking about my victories. I can do pretty well
Speaker 1: so talking about my shortcomings and some of the things
Speaker 1: that I've struggled with. What you find is there's a
Speaker 1: lot of people out there, some that you know very well,
Speaker 1: some strangers, and they reach out and you find out
Speaker 1: other people struggle with stuff. See. See, I would be
Speaker 1: horror so I happen to know what a deep, dark,
Speaker 1: depraved person I am on the inside, and I would
Speaker 1: be really mostly braved. I would be that deep, but
Speaker 1: you're just mostly depraved. The depravity has depths, That's what
Speaker 1: I was refining to But I would be sort of
Speaker 1: afraid for people to so I I personally think I've
Speaker 1: come a long way, but I think people would be
Speaker 1: shocked to know the sort of screw up I was
Speaker 1: in my twenties. You mentioned, first of all, I know
Speaker 1: what to do with myself. The functional families are the
Speaker 1: ones who don't know. Barry, maybe in my twenties, I
Speaker 1: don't know what to do with myself. If you grow
Speaker 1: up on Long Island and you're a Jewish male and
Speaker 1: you're don't you know, you don't have a purpose, well
Speaker 1: you go to law school. That pretty much the lead
Speaker 1: in the aimless That's exactly right. And so by the
Speaker 1: time I got out of law school, I knew two things.
Speaker 1: I knew I was fascinated by the intellectual debate surrounding jurisprudence,
Speaker 1: and I knew for sure I did not want to
Speaker 1: be a lawyer. But it took me. But it's a
Speaker 1: great education, fantastic education. Arguably, I've made the claim that
Speaker 1: law school is superior education to business school because at
Speaker 1: least the way business school used to be taught, it
Speaker 1: would fill people's heads with how business should be run,
Speaker 1: whereas law school teaches you how to think and and so,
Speaker 1: you know, I was a screw up in my twenties,
Speaker 1: and even in my early thirties. It took me till
Speaker 1: I was you know, my wife kicked me in the
Speaker 1: button said, figure out what the hell you're gonna do
Speaker 1: and go do it. You're sort of I don't kid yourself,
Speaker 1: you're still a screw up. Yeah, don't sell your short right,
Speaker 1: You're you're quite We're all trying to figure out the
Speaker 1: kids are. You're putting one step, one ft in front
Speaker 1: of the other and then hopefully along the way making
Speaker 1: small investments and relationships. And one of the you know
Speaker 1: we talked about there's a finance show or a business show.
Speaker 1: You we talked about the magic of compound interest. Put
Speaker 1: a thousand dollars a month, a quarter, a year. When
Speaker 1: you're a young person, you wake up and you have,
Speaker 1: you know, a couple hundred ground you're older. The same
Speaker 1: is true of relationships. There's evidence that small investments when
Speaker 1: you're a younger person that are consistent a quick text message,
Speaker 1: a call, uh, you know, a note saying hey, I'm
Speaker 1: sorry I heard about this, or congratulating people, finding time
Speaker 1: for the reunion, finding time for weddings. You wake up
Speaker 1: and when you've made those little investments, you find that
Speaker 1: you have a lot of meaningful relationships, or that you
Speaker 1: wake up in that meaning that relationships is more meaningful.
Speaker 1: And so just as we tell young people to be
Speaker 1: disciplined amount making short term investments or small investments as
Speaker 1: they're young. I think all of us can start away, uh,
Speaker 1: start right away, and start making little investments across a
Speaker 1: broader set of relationships, and then I think you do
Speaker 1: wake up one day and think, Wow, there's a lot
Speaker 1: more in this bank than I'd ever imagined. That that
Speaker 1: does compound interest applies to relationships. Most people want asked
Speaker 1: what is the singular relationship, singular relationship in their life,
Speaker 1: Most say or across their mom. Really, and when you
Speaker 1: think of out at why is that? Some of it's instinctual,
Speaker 1: but a lot of it is that your mom is
Speaker 1: the premier investor. She began making little investments in you
Speaker 1: every day from a very very early point, and you
Speaker 1: end up with a relationship that is singular when you're older.
Speaker 1: And I think that's a lesson in the importance of
Speaker 1: not only investing and saving early, but making an effort
Speaker 1: to make small, tiny, regular investments in relationships from a
Speaker 1: young age. I'm going to tell you something that you
Speaker 1: did for me unknowingly. You write about giving your mom
Speaker 1: a good death in the book, and it's actually very
Speaker 1: touching story. And how you explain how significant that is
Speaker 1: to you personally. So my mom is fairly healthy, but
Speaker 1: she's eighty three. You don't live forever. Oblivion beckons and early.
Speaker 1: And it was something that wasn't actually from the book,
Speaker 1: it ended up in the book. It was from No
Speaker 1: Malice from your website Mercy No Malice, And basically you
Speaker 1: talked about that. Maybe it was in the original post
Speaker 1: about um your mom and it my mom is. There's
Speaker 1: two problems with my mom. She's giant pay in the
Speaker 1: neck and I'm just like but no, no, but even worse,
Speaker 1: I'm just like her. I used to I used to
Speaker 1: jokingly tell my wife, you know, I was born into
Speaker 1: a wealthy family. Just the wrong family took me home.
Speaker 1: I really should have been you know, royalty. The wrong
Speaker 1: family took me home. And she goes, I've met your mother.
Speaker 1: There's no way the wrong family took you home. And
Speaker 1: the fact that I'm her clone, and so I get
Speaker 1: to be irritated by all her habits that I have
Speaker 1: in spades your your post on that last year sort
Speaker 1: of softens how I interact with her for the better. Yeah. Look,
Speaker 1: everyone has I don't wanna call love hate, but you know,
Speaker 1: she installed all the buttons. Not only does you know
Speaker 1: how to push your buttons to make you crazy, she's
Speaker 1: the one who installed that. And just look at how
Speaker 1: your wife treats her parents. You're just like, how come
Speaker 1: you're so impatient with them? But anyways, for me, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of research and a lot of literature out
Speaker 1: there on the reward or lack their have a raising kids.
Speaker 1: I don't think what we talk a lot about because
Speaker 1: it's I guess it's scary is the reward of giving
Speaker 1: someone a good exit. And I recognize them doing a
Speaker 1: lot of virtue signaling here, but I was in a position.
Speaker 1: By the way, signaling is just an ad hominem attack
Speaker 1: against people you don't like. Hold that aside. I'll so
Speaker 1: I don't like myself. No, no, I mean when people
Speaker 1: accuse you of virtue signaling, they're not attacking your idea.
Speaker 1: They're saying, oh, you're just we're gonna own the liver.
Speaker 1: It's imposter syndrome where I think I sound like a
Speaker 1: better person than I am and I want to acknowledge.
Speaker 1: We can talk about hold me barry. Anyways, I was
Speaker 1: in a position and a lot of people aren't. But
Speaker 1: my mom was a lot of my life, raised me
Speaker 1: alone on a secretary salary. But it's not a sob story.
Speaker 1: We had a nice life. There's a lot of discipline
Speaker 1: and a lot of love in my household. And I
Speaker 1: decided I had the resources and I had the flexibility
Speaker 1: to take uh some time off and I moved in
Speaker 1: with her. I asked her what when she was diagnosed
Speaker 1: with terminal cancer. I said, what's on your bucket list? Right,
Speaker 1: That's what a son does, right. Instead, I only have
Speaker 1: one thing on my bucket list, and I said what's
Speaker 1: that and said, I want to die at home. I'm like, okay,
Speaker 1: we can make that happen. It's not gonna be easy,
Speaker 1: but I can figure that out. I moved in with her.
Speaker 1: So I moved into the Dell web Active Living seniors
Speaker 1: community and summerly Nevada. And during the day I would
Speaker 1: manage my mom's healthcare and we watched Jeopardy and look
Speaker 1: at old photos. And to night I'd go downtown to
Speaker 1: the strip, get drunk, com party with strippers. It was
Speaker 1: a very unusual, yet very rewarding part of my life,
Speaker 1: and I will cherish that. I'm most proud I think
Speaker 1: of my children, my professional or modest professional success and
Speaker 1: also just giving my mom the right exit. And I'm
Speaker 1: blessed because a lot of people can't do that. But
Speaker 1: what I say to people is, if you're in a
Speaker 1: if you're in a position to help your parents exit
Speaker 1: me more dignified. And I'm not talking about it's the
Speaker 1: right thing and you're a good person. It's very rewarding.
Speaker 1: It was she and I really nothing went unsaid, and
Speaker 1: it was it was a nice it was just a
Speaker 1: very rewarding opportunity, and it's something that I'll cherish the
Speaker 1: rest of my life. I found that to be really
Speaker 1: inspirational in something that was UM was really in true
Speaker 1: sting in the book. UM. Let's talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about some other things from the book that I thought
Speaker 1: was was fascinating. While you're young, get credentials and get
Speaker 1: yourself to a city. Sure, explain so we live in
Speaker 1: a cast system. We like to think it's a meritocracy.
Speaker 1: Us is very much and increasingly become a cassist and
Speaker 1: explain what that cast system is. It's simple, it's where
Speaker 1: you went to college and that is show me two things.
Speaker 1: I can tell you how much someone is going to
Speaker 1: make within fairly type band based on two things. Where
Speaker 1: they're certified, Where they're credentialed in terms of the college
Speaker 1: they went to and their zip code. Show me someone
Speaker 1: who has an engineering degree from Dartmouth who lives in
Speaker 1: New York or San Francisco. I'm gonna show you someone
Speaker 1: who's making a d fifty k a year by the
Speaker 1: time the thirties. Show me someone who's a high school
Speaker 1: dropout living in Little Rock, Little Rock. That person is
Speaker 1: likely if they're making fort k by the time they're thirty.
Speaker 1: We live in a cast system. Get certified, and I
Speaker 1: recognize that college isn't always the right thing for everybody.
Speaker 1: I don't care if it's a Class three driver's license
Speaker 1: and asthetitions license or a member a union card. You
Speaker 1: have to get credential. Also, while you're young, get to
Speaker 1: a city. Two thirds of the economic growth is going
Speaker 1: to happen in the top twenty cities in America over
Speaker 1: the next twenty to thirty years. It gets harder and
Speaker 1: harder to be in a city when you get older
Speaker 1: and start collecting dogs and kids. So get there while
Speaker 1: you're young. But people constantly come up to me and say,
Speaker 1: my son's thinking about dropping out of college. Maybe it's
Speaker 1: the next Steve Jobs. And I assume your kid is
Speaker 1: not Steve Jobs. And we have these very well publicized
Speaker 1: examples of college dropouts going on to do well, and
Speaker 1: that is three of them, that Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg,
Speaker 1: and Steve Jobs. How many of tell me about the
Speaker 1: rest of the fortune one thousand top one people in
Speaker 1: those companies. How many of those dropped out of college
Speaker 1: have very few and most have graduate degrees increasingly fear
Speaker 1: but almost all of them have college trees. Now the
Speaker 1: problem is is the man in the mirror tests academics.
Speaker 1: We have become drunk on exclusivity. We no longer see
Speaker 1: ourselves as public servants. We see ourselves as luxury brands.
Speaker 1: And we brag about the fact that the people that
Speaker 1: apply to n Y You don't get in, which is
Speaker 1: tantamount to a housing or a homeless shelter, bragging that
Speaker 1: they turned away of the people who showed up to
Speaker 1: sleep there that night. That is not a good thing.
Speaker 1: You and I both went to remarkable schools. They gave
Speaker 1: us remarkable opportunities, and we've talked about this. Both you
Speaker 1: and I were remarkably unremarkable. And if we hadn't had
Speaker 1: the generosity of New York and California taxpayers, respectively pick
Speaker 1: us up by the scruff of our neck and fling
Speaker 1: us forward into opportunity. You and neither you nor I
Speaker 1: would be here right now. So let's talk about that
Speaker 1: a set because it touches on both the credentials and
Speaker 1: your mom. I love this story from the book You've Gotten.
Speaker 1: You had gotten rejected by U c l A. And
Speaker 1: your mother kicks you in the button says, reapply. I
Speaker 1: just got rejected three months ago. It doesn't matter. Reapply,
Speaker 1: you write to them. I'm a native son of California,
Speaker 1: raised by an immigrant single mother who is a secretary.
Speaker 1: If you don't let me in, I'm going to be
Speaker 1: installing shelving for the rest of my life. And my
Speaker 1: parents both dropped out of school and we're taking out
Speaker 1: of school when they were thirteen to work for their
Speaker 1: families in London, in in in Glasgow, and they came
Speaker 1: here and I either I could either live at home
Speaker 1: and go to U c l A. Or I wasn't
Speaker 1: going to college. We just didn't have the money for that.
Speaker 1: And people say, well, that the world is your oyster.
Speaker 1: You can do anything. In America. No, it wasn't. I
Speaker 1: didn't know. I didn't have that confidence. We didn't have money.
Speaker 1: There was just I just I find that the downside
Speaker 1: of a meritocracy and capitalism is that we assume anybody
Speaker 1: can be anything, and if you're not successful, you're a loser.
Speaker 1: You screwed up, because we live in a society supposedly
Speaker 1: where anyone could do anything. And my dad, he was
Speaker 1: well meaning, but not what i'd call, you know, a
Speaker 1: very worldly guy, said you don't need college. I'm gutting.
Speaker 1: I'm getting you a job at stalling shelving, which, by
Speaker 1: the way, was gonna be eighteen bucks an hour, which
Speaker 1: seems like a lot of money to me and could
Speaker 1: fulfill my dream of getting or trans am, which was
Speaker 1: the only goal I had at the age of At
Speaker 1: the age of eighteen, and my mom said, you need
Speaker 1: to appeal to U. C. L A. You have to
Speaker 1: go to college. She was smart enough, and the truth
Speaker 1: has a nice ring to it. I literally said, I'm
Speaker 1: you're letting me in or I'm installing shelving. And I
Speaker 1: remember the day they called me at home and this
Speaker 1: woman said, you're a sub standard student, but you don't
Speaker 1: test well, but your native stunt of California, and we're
Speaker 1: gonna let you in. And I rewarded them with a
Speaker 1: two point two seven g p A from U c
Speaker 1: l A. And then they took another chance, tell me
Speaker 1: and let me into grad school at Berkeley. How did
Speaker 1: you get into Berkeley with media into grades? Uh? So,
Speaker 1: my my only saving grace is I'm an idiot savant
Speaker 1: with standardized tests. Yeah, so whereas my wife would say,
Speaker 1: you're half of that. So I'm just an idiot when
Speaker 1: it comes to that's the head. But so I was
Speaker 1: able to get into grad school. How did you get
Speaker 1: into Berkeley from U c l A with bad grades
Speaker 1: and bead tests? Again generosity of a woman named fran Hill.
Speaker 1: You know, I had some positive attributes. I had finagled
Speaker 1: my way into Morgan Stanley. I had offered from several
Speaker 1: investment banks. I interview, Well, I took a job with
Speaker 1: Morgan Stanley because I heard they didn't check transcripts and
Speaker 1: I lied about my grades. I heard they didn't drug
Speaker 1: it was a room, or they don't check trans whips. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well they didn't back then, and then a kid and
Speaker 1: then a kid had found out they found out a
Speaker 1: kid was accused of insider trading, had never graduated from
Speaker 1: the University of Illinois, and they started checking everybody transcripts. Anyways,
Speaker 1: that was the benefit of an analog age is that, uh,
Speaker 1: you show it with stuff like that. And they also
Speaker 1: I heard they didn't drug tests, which ended up being
Speaker 1: a live But anyways, I went to Morgan Stanley. I
Speaker 1: was involved in a lot of activities. I was an
Speaker 1: athlete to u c l A. So I had some
Speaker 1: pause of stuff. But I remember them calling me and saying,
Speaker 1: we we love your application, but we think there's an air.
Speaker 1: It says that your GPS two point two seven, which
Speaker 1: keep in mind, is not easy to do because if
Speaker 1: you get less than two point oh, you get academic
Speaker 1: probation and then you go subject to dismissal. So you
Speaker 1: gotta get a bunch of d's and then you got
Speaker 1: to get above at two point oh to reset the
Speaker 1: clock for two more semesters. So I came perilously close.
Speaker 1: I would sleep walking through life like a lot of
Speaker 1: twenty two year olds, uh to not getting into you know,
Speaker 1: getting kicked out of u c l A. But again,
Speaker 1: Berkeley took a chance on me, got my act together
Speaker 1: I think like you, I was a bit of a
Speaker 1: late bloomer, and you know, start it an upward spiral.
Speaker 1: But if it hadn't been for the generosity and vision
Speaker 1: of California taxpayers and the reasons of you, see, Berkeley
Speaker 1: will graduate more kids from low income households this year
Speaker 1: than the entire IVY League combined. Seven of the seven
Speaker 1: of the ten universities with the greatest income diversity are
Speaker 1: all University or University of California schools. But in general,
Speaker 1: I would argue that universities in the US have lost
Speaker 1: the script see themselves as luxury brands. We need to
Speaker 1: massively increase the number of seats. We need to tax
Speaker 1: endowments if they don't grow their seats faster than inflation.
Speaker 1: Stanford has tripled, that has tripled the number of applicants.
Speaker 1: They haven't increased their freshman seats hardly at all. That is,
Speaker 1: in my opinion, a crime. The head of admissions at
Speaker 1: Harvard says, we could have doubled our freshman class without
Speaker 1: sacrificing any quality with a thirty eight billion dollar endowment. Well, Boston,
Speaker 1: why aren't you doing that? This has literally become we
Speaker 1: have to get to a point where we're more like Canada,
Speaker 1: where more kids have access to the greatest, the greatest
Speaker 1: lubricant for upward mobility in the world, and that is
Speaker 1: higher education. And speaking of lubricants, the high education, you've
Speaker 1: made a number of gifts to both Berkeley and n Y.
Speaker 1: You tell us what motivated that? Is that just gratitude
Speaker 1: and giving back, you know, I just that was an
Speaker 1: easy one for me. That was just an easy one.
Speaker 1: I got really lucky, and uh, you know, I just
Speaker 1: want that that was just easy. It's if it hadn't
Speaker 1: been for Unfortunately, college is a lot more expensive now,
Speaker 1: and that was just an obvious nod to to again
Speaker 1: California taxpayers and the jewel of California, the University of California.
Speaker 1: So that was just an overdue nod to, uh, to
Speaker 1: the University of California. So so let's talk about luck
Speaker 1: because it's a really I don't want to call it
Speaker 1: a theme, but it's a thread that runs through the book,
Speaker 1: and it's worth exploring a little bit. You reference how
Speaker 1: incredibly lucky you've been. I've had numerous people sitting their
Speaker 1: seats and that seat where you are, and they've all
Speaker 1: said billionaires, Nobel laureates, um masters in business. We have
Speaker 1: all said, you know, but for a lucky break here,
Speaker 1: or the way the bull bounced there, I wouldn't be
Speaker 1: here today. Well, look, it's easy to credit your character
Speaker 1: and your grit for your successes and the markets for
Speaker 1: your failures. I have no such delusions. And it's not
Speaker 1: a humble bragg It really isn't. And it can be
Speaker 1: tiny switches in your DNA or the way you're born.
Speaker 1: My we I think I've talked about this with you,
Speaker 1: my freshman roommate in the fraternity. To be born in
Speaker 1: n a white heterosexual male in the greatest United States,
Speaker 1: in the United States, the greatest country in the world,
Speaker 1: and in California, which was about to experience the greatest
Speaker 1: increase in value. And yet there was more value creating
Speaker 1: a seven mile radius of Sfo from nine than all
Speaker 1: of Europe since World War Two. And I would just
Speaker 1: happen to be at the right place at the right time,
Speaker 1: luckiest person in the world. Right a white guy, heterosexual,
Speaker 1: we had advantages that other people did not have, and
Speaker 1: that's unfair. But the reality was I was all of
Speaker 1: those things, and so I got very lucky. There was
Speaker 1: one other question. I wanted to get to um before
Speaker 1: some of our fear of head questions, and I have
Speaker 1: variations of our favorite questions. All Right, you mentioned that
Speaker 1: you were selling assets, you were moving to cash. Have
Speaker 1: you still are you still in that stupid I was
Speaker 1: a reaction and I was angry about Trump's selection, and
Speaker 1: I got advice from you always be in the market.
Speaker 1: We can't time the markets. And also at the motorants
Speaker 1: told me the same thing. I went back in the markets,
Speaker 1: and I thank god I did. It's been an unbelievable
Speaker 1: right up. I do think there are certain canarias in
Speaker 1: the coal mine, though. I think when modestly talented twenty
Speaker 1: five year olds are getting a hundred and fifty thousand
Speaker 1: dollars a year because they know how, they know python,
Speaker 1: when midtown or downtown real estate and bad, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of marginal areas is getting fifty or sixty bucks
Speaker 1: to square foot. You know, just I see mediocre restaurants
Speaker 1: you can't get reservations at. There's a certain I feel
Speaker 1: like we're late cycles like that, we're ready, we're due.
Speaker 1: So here's the interesting thing. Coming out of a financial crisis,
Speaker 1: you tend to have a longer, more modest This is
Speaker 1: Ryn Horton Roths research. You have a longer but more
Speaker 1: modest um economic expansion. So here we are. The procession
Speaker 1: ended technically two thousand, it's nine years later. It's a
Speaker 1: pretty long run. Is the longest ever? I mean this
Speaker 1: is kind of yours. It's pretty close to it. I
Speaker 1: mean you could you could go through earlier periods and
Speaker 1: post war wear two periods and find it. Although there
Speaker 1: were a lot of small recessions late fifties, early sixties. Um,
Speaker 1: so we're the problem is it's such an artificial period
Speaker 1: with FED stimulus etcetera, etcetera. It's it's if it's the
Speaker 1: longest one, it's the longest one with an asterisk. Although
Speaker 1: when you look around the world, Australia went more than
Speaker 1: twenty five years without a recession in the boom period
Speaker 1: of China's growth, So that's kind of interesting, isn't all this?
Speaker 1: Basically our generation has gotten really smart. I'm just on
Speaker 1: the tail of the baby boom, as in our generation
Speaker 1: just perfectly gamed the system and figured out a way
Speaker 1: to elect officials and basically said we want the greatest
Speaker 1: transfer and wealth ever occurred ever registered in history to
Speaker 1: be from every other cohort two baby boomers. So basically,
Speaker 1: big tech is a vessel of the transfer of wealth
Speaker 1: from the entire world to the US and then to
Speaker 1: the coast, and everything from social security to artificially suppressing
Speaker 1: interest rates with drive ups asset values, to social security,
Speaker 1: to mortgage tax deduction to capital gains, there's nothing but
Speaker 1: a giant transfer of wealth from every cohort to baby boomers.
Speaker 1: From the future pulled back listen. So I would argue,
Speaker 1: I would art, you're technically not a baby boomer. You're
Speaker 1: sort of in the valley between the Boomers and the
Speaker 1: gen X. Like to me, the baby Boomers ended in
Speaker 1: nineteen nine. If you were born in the sixties, you're
Speaker 1: just so. My sister was born in sixty four. I'm
Speaker 1: I get two and a half years on you. You
Speaker 1: don't really feel like a baby boomer. That's a whole
Speaker 1: different Like I don't relate to the boomers. I kind
Speaker 1: of look at them as skans, but I also look
Speaker 1: at Gen X, which is totally different than than me. Um.
Speaker 1: But I think the Boomers are the worst generation, and
Speaker 1: I think history will bear that out. The greatest generation
Speaker 1: absolutely and everything in my view. We talked about there's
Speaker 1: a one on I go on Fox once a week
Speaker 1: because I like to go behind enemy lines and they can't.
Speaker 1: By the way, I love watching you on that because
Speaker 1: they don't know what the hell to do with you.
Speaker 1: You're clearly a capitalist. They you just sold L two
Speaker 1: to Gardner last year, You've sold how many companies have
Speaker 1: gone public or have been purchased? Three four? Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: three four and two. Okay, So that's a great track record. Really,
Speaker 1: you're listen, you know, that's what's great about America's guys
Speaker 1: like making survive. I'd be in some sort of prison
Speaker 1: if I If you're a venture capitalist, you're gonna make
Speaker 1: a hundred investments you're looking for the one home run.
Speaker 1: Three four and two is a great track record for
Speaker 1: stop and think about how many startups fell most of
Speaker 1: One of my questions of success is really resilience. There's
Speaker 1: a lot to that. You keep mentioning grit um, but
Speaker 1: they don't know how to deal with you because you're
Speaker 1: you are a capitalist. But you talk about empathy and
Speaker 1: about um helping others and about things beyond mirror money,
Speaker 1: and they're perplexed by it. Well, it's it's so that
Speaker 1: they had this. It was hilarious. They had this Socialism
Speaker 1: Versus Capitalism week on Fox and guess what capitalism won?
Speaker 1: And so they invited me on, and for some reason
Speaker 1: they always introduced me as a socialists. And I like
Speaker 1: those guys, Stuart Varney and Nick Neil Cavuto. I think
Speaker 1: they're really really intelligent, interesting guys, and they're generous to me,
Speaker 1: and they're nice to me. I actually I really like
Speaker 1: the people over there, despite being a sort of a
Speaker 1: you know, the spinning up hate on a regular basis,
Speaker 1: other than the hate based business model, they're fantastic. But
Speaker 1: I'm writing, and I'm going to need your help on this.
Speaker 1: I'm writing an article for The Economist, or I'm claimed
Speaker 1: to be writing an article, and they on on capitalism
Speaker 1: and socialism is nothing but okay, the means of production
Speaker 1: controlled by the state and divvied up by and the
Speaker 1: spoils divvied up. Tariffs are socialists of artificially suppressing interest
Speaker 1: rates are socialist's competitive telling. Telling an air conditioning company
Speaker 1: to locate in Michigan is socialist. Child labor laws are socialist.
Speaker 1: Capital game ends, tax cuts socialists. So you me and
Speaker 1: the president walk into a bar. Two of us are capitalists.
Speaker 1: The president of a socialist and they have the entire
Speaker 1: reimbursing farmers who supported him against Chinese tasks. How is
Speaker 1: that social? I mean, we're really going up script now.
Speaker 1: But you look at the initially thought, Okay, I'm a
Speaker 1: fan of actually going after China for unfair trade. I
Speaker 1: believe that we have this unbelievable ecosystem where the greatest
Speaker 1: universities into the world, train some incredible human talent, and
Speaker 1: then concert with incredible financial system, we create innovation that's
Speaker 1: just unparalleled. The Chinese then steal it and then cell
Speaker 1: bactist for thirty cents in the dollar. So I am
Speaker 1: all for a trade war. But here's the problem. One,
Speaker 1: we could have done it with partners, and two the
Speaker 1: Chinese sinking twenty and thirty year increments. They are willing
Speaker 1: to shut down towns and say, uh, sorry, you need
Speaker 1: to relocate. The tariffs are bad. We don't care relocate.
Speaker 1: It is what it is. A farmer goes out of
Speaker 1: business and MSNBC is out there and the president is
Speaker 1: trying to bail them out. We just don't have It's
Speaker 1: like fight, it's going to war with Russia. You can
Speaker 1: have better tanks, you can have better officers. Their willingness
Speaker 1: to endure suffering is just gonna It's just gonna end
Speaker 1: badly for whoever invades him. And I think the same
Speaker 1: is true of this trade war unfortunately. So normally around now,
Speaker 1: I would go to my favorite questions, but you've done
Speaker 1: them so many times I had to come up with
Speaker 1: some nuance variations on them. So so let's um, let's
Speaker 1: speed around this. So alright, So normally around now, I
Speaker 1: asked what the first car you own? But I'm gonna
Speaker 1: ask what's the next car you're gonna buy. You know,
Speaker 1: you're a car guy. So I'm in the midst of
Speaker 1: a midlife crisis that I think I'm going to grow
Speaker 1: out of in about thirty or forty years. So I'm
Speaker 1: buy the car. It's cheaper than I got. Okay, that's right.
Speaker 1: So I have a gl five fifty. I have a
Speaker 1: truck right now, I merseaches, that's an amazing car. I're
Speaker 1: all up, bits of baby. I look so German and
Speaker 1: so interesting in that car. Most of them like cars cars,
Speaker 1: so I mean they you know, they just designed it,
Speaker 1: and when you look at it, you can't unless they're
Speaker 1: side by side. You can't even test a fantastic change.
Speaker 1: I have the Model X, the Tesla. I don't like electric.
Speaker 1: I like, I just don't like the feel of it.
Speaker 1: I like an internal combustion engine. It's a great car.
Speaker 1: I don't enjoy. I don't like. But by the way,
Speaker 1: go on YouTube watch the videos of the Model exploding
Speaker 1: with Ferraris and Lamborghin. It is a superior car. But
Speaker 1: Elon Musk called the cave diver trying to save young
Speaker 1: people's lives a pedophile. And I went on CNBC the
Speaker 1: next day and I announced I was selling it. So
Speaker 1: I have to sell the thing, right And by the way,
Speaker 1: the depreciation on those bad words enormous. So I said, okay,
Speaker 1: I gotta get another car. And you, I merely waged
Speaker 1: in and said, and I'm thinking I want to get
Speaker 1: a range over because I'm all about signaling my worth
Speaker 1: as a man and as a mate. So I need
Speaker 1: to find some ridiculously over problem. But you have the
Speaker 1: g Wagon, so I would picture you in the h
Speaker 1: the g Wagon, Oh, I thought, stupid car, that's what
Speaker 1: I thought you were talking about. Oh, so you have
Speaker 1: the longer longer you, I immediately assumed you went g wagon. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: I'm in secure, but I'm not pathetic. That's what I'm
Speaker 1: back against. I missed the that's literally like, okay, it's
Speaker 1: a German military view. I need to find a way
Speaker 1: to spend more money than owning a Hummer. It's like
Speaker 1: I own at the AMG version of it. It's like ridiculous.
Speaker 1: So so the g L. I'm asking you a question.
Speaker 1: You know me pretty well. What's my next car? Pick it?
Speaker 1: Pick it? So what's my next So you're you're a
Speaker 1: dual city. Yeah right, yeah to me, I don't see
Speaker 1: how you don't have a nine eleven convertible down Dude,
Speaker 1: I can't fit in a Porsche. I'm six three. I
Speaker 1: have buddies with six six. By the way, I am
Speaker 1: not a problem. I am not a problem. I do
Speaker 1: not fit in a Porsche. I'd have an elbow out
Speaker 1: each window. That is a ridiculous car. It's a beautiful car.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's beautiful. It's just a very fast
Speaker 1: and good handling car. Eleven. You want a pretty car,
Speaker 1: go buy a Bentley go By. And I'm not asking
Speaker 1: mar guy. Um alright, So then what is what is
Speaker 1: the big dog rolling? Come on, so I have an
Speaker 1: M six convertible that's M sex. Now let me just
Speaker 1: explain it ridiculous. Let me just explain. I'm also a
Speaker 1: cheap s ob, so I won't go out and spend
Speaker 1: a hundred. That's called not having kids. You don't have kids,
Speaker 1: have kids. I have, I have a house. I have
Speaker 1: five cars in a boat. But hold that aside. I
Speaker 1: bought this car off of lease from Indianapolis Christine condition,
Speaker 1: and I paid less the guy that used to serve
Speaker 1: through the recycler when you're a teenager, No, well to
Speaker 1: look at car? Sure a right enough for you? Back
Speaker 1: to me, what car do I buy? Serry sell a car?
Speaker 1: Masters in business? What car do I guess? See irustrated
Speaker 1: professor angry range rover HSC sport is that's what I
Speaker 1: should do? Is? Now understand rangerovers are wildly overpriced. Right.
Speaker 1: They lease out terribly, they purchased terribly. They're not known
Speaker 1: for their for their mechanical range. But if you want
Speaker 1: to sit the yeah, that's your SA. I think that's
Speaker 1: the way to go. Even though I can give you
Speaker 1: a million reasons why no one should buy that car,
Speaker 1: but the signaling to show your worthiness to take care
Speaker 1: of Sara. You get me, even though you should be
Speaker 1: in some cute little sports car. I don't see you
Speaker 1: in a Baily or anything. Um So in the book,
Speaker 1: I discovered a fast anything about one of your mentors.
Speaker 1: Your mentor taught the exact same class in marketing and
Speaker 1: branding that you teach. My class is based on David
Speaker 1: Acker's course Father and Modern Branding. I didn't know what
Speaker 1: I wanted to do. As we referenced before, business school
Speaker 1: is mostly for the elite in the aimless. It's people
Speaker 1: who want out of the profession they're in. I knew
Speaker 1: I didn't know what I wanted to do. Just knew
Speaker 1: I didn't want to go back to investment banking. Took
Speaker 1: this second year class of David Acker. You talked about
Speaker 1: the importance of yellow and how intangible has created more
Speaker 1: shareholder value than any other any other system or construct
Speaker 1: in history. He really kind of identified and encapsulated the
Speaker 1: brand era and I thought, this is what I want
Speaker 1: to do with my life. And I went to him
Speaker 1: and said, I'm starting a consulting firm based on your
Speaker 1: principles called Profit. I'd like you to join. You said,
Speaker 1: no way, I'm not interested in working with you your
Speaker 1: second year student. But long story short, and profit ultimately
Speaker 1: was sold, was it? Yeah, we grew up to four
Speaker 1: hundred people. It's still around today. I think it's about
Speaker 1: five hundred people now. Sold it to den Sue tremendously rewarding. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: David did join as vice chairman. But you know, what
Speaker 1: do you want when you go to school. You want
Speaker 1: to find someone who inspires you and sets you off
Speaker 1: on a career that is rewarding personally and economically. And
Speaker 1: I got that from David Ocker. So around now, I
Speaker 1: asked the book question, tell me about your favorite books.
Speaker 1: But we've done that already, So I'm gonna ask you
Speaker 1: a different book, different book question. Tell me about a
Speaker 1: book that changed the direction of your life. It's weird.
Speaker 1: He just died. Actually, I read my first kind of
Speaker 1: real novel was in high school, and it's not that dramatic.
Speaker 1: I read a book by Herman Wook called The Winds
Speaker 1: of War and just learning about and just learning about
Speaker 1: World War two and the you know what, it was
Speaker 1: probably the kind of the defining conflict of our century
Speaker 1: and what different groups from learning about the Holocaust. It
Speaker 1: just sort of got me thinking about things I had
Speaker 1: never thought about and sort of changed, got me interested
Speaker 1: in history, got me inntertioned in war history. So that
Speaker 1: for me was sort of my you know, kind of
Speaker 1: first adult book, if you will. So you are an
Speaker 1: open book and you reveal yourself warts and I'm an
Speaker 1: open book very but tell us something we don't know about,
Speaker 1: Scott Galloway, Uh is there anything we don't know about?
Speaker 1: Pretty much learn all out there. I was the bruined
Speaker 1: bear mascot. In my sophomore year at UCL I won
Speaker 1: most Comical in Junior high school. In junior high school,
Speaker 1: junior high school most Comical, I didn't know they voted
Speaker 1: for that. And Steve Martin. That's I'm aging myself. I
Speaker 1: got Steve Wait wait wait, and since then I haven't
Speaker 1: had a single award. Wait Steve Martin. You know they do.
Speaker 1: Remember in high school and junior high they would do
Speaker 1: like you know, and just to give you with the
Speaker 1: age I went to high school, I got Steve Martin.
Speaker 1: That was like my thing in the high school poll. Oh,
Speaker 1: so most likely to be like Steve Martin, not not?
Speaker 1: You went to school with Steve Martin. No, no, I
Speaker 1: think is a decade for sure. Um, so tell us
Speaker 1: what you do for fun outside of class, outside of
Speaker 1: occasionally holding onto a fiberglasses Pretty pretty boring, not that interesting. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, time with kids, a lot of Netflix. Um,
Speaker 1: what are you watching on Netflix? Oh, my new favorite
Speaker 1: show is I'm like everyone else, I'm obsessed with a
Speaker 1: Game of Thrones. I think Veep is the best written
Speaker 1: show on TV. The new show that I love is Fleabag,
Speaker 1: which you may or may not have heard of. The
Speaker 1: person who wrote Fleabag wrote something else. I'm trying to
Speaker 1: remember what it was. I haven't started Fleabag. It's outstanding.
Speaker 1: And also killing Eve is really wonderful. Really. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: every Thursday night I do the same thing. I commute
Speaker 1: between her and Florida. I go home, I take a iron,
Speaker 1: I come back, I put my kids to bad I
Speaker 1: vape with my wife. I'm finally confident enough to say that.
Speaker 1: And then we watched television. So I think the key
Speaker 1: I think the defining art form of this age is television. No,
Speaker 1: we are in the golden age of television. I'm going
Speaker 1: to give you three recommendations for it. One of them
Speaker 1: I don't know if you're gonna like you like sci
Speaker 1: fi at all? Lay it on the Expanse, the Expanse.
Speaker 1: Where's that? So the Expanse TV. It's either Netflix or Amazon.
Speaker 1: So the Expanse takes place in the not too distant future.
Speaker 1: You have three political powers. You have Earth, you have Mars,
Speaker 1: and then you have the belts out where the miners
Speaker 1: are out pulling stuff off. Anyway, fashioning science fiction really
Speaker 1: kind of interest? Watch the terror I don't. I watched
Speaker 1: Black Mirror and oh I love Ridley Scott one of
Speaker 1: the best. Um Black Mirror and Electric Dreams is another.
Speaker 1: But the two comments I want to share with you, Um,
Speaker 1: have you started seeing on Netflix? I'm sorry, I haven't.
Speaker 1: Is that great? It's so picture if I had a
Speaker 1: sum up in thirty seconds, female comedy writer married with
Speaker 1: a little girl, picture of female version of Curb Your
Speaker 1: Enthusiasm not as nasty but more of a sitcom funny,
Speaker 1: very very good. And the new one I just started
Speaker 1: the new one I just started watching with Christine Applegate
Speaker 1: dead to Me. That's good, that really really And so
Speaker 1: along those lines, watched Ricky Gervais's new series already went
Speaker 1: through fantat that's life something like that. Fabulous. Um, all right,
Speaker 1: our last two questions and the problem I can't ask
Speaker 1: you the advice you'd give a millennial, because your whole
Speaker 1: book is advice to millennials. What advice do you wish
Speaker 1: you got when you got out of college that nobody
Speaker 1: told you it's gonna everything's gonna be okay? I was insecure.
Speaker 1: I yeah. But in the book there they've survey seniors
Speaker 1: on what piece of advice they would give themselves to
Speaker 1: their younger selves, and consistently it comes back and it's
Speaker 1: sort of the same advice. Uh, they wish there one
Speaker 1: wish and they advised themselves as they wish they'd been
Speaker 1: less hard on themselves. Go ease you in yourself and
Speaker 1: that is Look life, you're gonna screw up and bring forgiveness.
Speaker 1: I mean, one of the keys of long term relationships
Speaker 1: is forgiveness. It's difficult to maintain a long term relationship
Speaker 1: unless you assume the other person who's going to occasionally
Speaker 1: screw up, and you need to bring forgiveness to the relationship.
Speaker 1: And you also need to bring that to yourself and
Speaker 1: be a little at because in the moment it seems
Speaker 1: like a big deal. But if you again the one
Speaker 1: piece of advice yours would give themselves, they wish they
Speaker 1: hadn't been so hard on themselves. So it's gonna be
Speaker 1: you know, it's gonna be okay, quite fascinating. Scott Galloway,
Speaker 1: This has been absolutely delightful. And you sold the range
Speaker 1: Rover and I sold the right and hsc be sure
Speaker 1: to get with the upgraded UM package that stops and
Speaker 1: does the lean of ones warning UM. And I'm not
Speaker 1: a fan of that car, but that's got your name
Speaker 1: written all over it. You know a dog. We have
Speaker 1: been speaking with n y U Stern School of Business
Speaker 1: Professor Scott Galloway, author of The Algebra of Happiness. If
Speaker 1: you enjoy this conversation, well look up an intro down
Speaker 1: an Inch on Apple, iTunes, um Overcast, Stitcher, Spotify, wherever
Speaker 1: finder podcasts are sold, and you can see any of
Speaker 1: the previous UH two and fifty or so conversations we've
Speaker 1: had over the past five years. We love your comments,
Speaker 1: feedback and suggestions right to us at m IB podcast
Speaker 1: at Bloomberg dot net. Be sure and hits the like
Speaker 1: button UH that you might see on whatever site you're on.
Speaker 1: Give us a review. I would be remiss if I
Speaker 1: did not thank the crack crew that helps put this
Speaker 1: podcast together each week. Medina Parwana is my task master
Speaker 1: slash producer. UH Michael Boyle is our booker. Michael bat
Speaker 1: Nick is our head of research. Atika val Brunn is
Speaker 1: our project director. I'm Barry Rihults. You've been listening to
Speaker 1: Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. Take taking to s