The Confidence Conversation We Need to Have with Scott Galloway

16:44And I think being okay with oneself is the thing that leads to being open to being softer.

16:53Simon Sinek:And you studied this more than I have. What is the connection between insecurity and some of that aggression that does come out as excessive or toxic masculinity? A lot there.

17:12Scott Galloway:So I think every father has an obligation to teach his son about, not necessarily about masculinity, but give your son a code. And I believe that a decent code for young men is an aspirational code of masculinity. And I think every young man needs to think about being a provider. How am I eventually, if I want to have a family, going to take an economic lead here? That's not to say I'm going to get in the way of my wife's economic progress. Sometimes that is being a man saying, all right, I'm going to be supportive of my partner who's better at this whole money thing. But I think it's a decent, healthy position to start from that I need to have a plan, gain skills, certification such that I can be economically viable.

17:57Scott Galloway:Young men are still disproportionately evaluated based on their economic viability. Is that fair or not? I don't know. It just is. Yeah. But the second leg of the stool is protection. and to recognize that if you've never been a victim, it's hard to empathize with victims. I've almost never in my life felt unsafe. I'm 6 '2", 190. I remember walking down the street with my sister during COVID, a homeless guy kind of stirred, and she jumped out of her skin. And I said, that was a bit of an overreaction. And she said, easy for you to say. And it's like Dave Chappelle said, when he got paid in cash,$30 ,000, and was in his backpack, and he said for the first time he felt like what it's like to be a woman, that everyone is ready to attack you.

18:38Scott Galloway:And I recognize now, and I think part of the problem with big tech is it's led by people who've never really understood poverty. They've never really understood what it's like to be on the wrong end of racism or homophobia or the dangers that women face every day. I hadn't thought about Waymo's taking off. I'm fascinated by autonomous. And one of the groups fueling Waymo is women because they don't feel safe with the driver. And someone did a study. like uber drivers never talk to me the majority of uber drivers try to strike up a conversation with the woman in the back seat because i never experienced that i don't think it exists so it's important that young boys but boys women should cross the street when they see men on that side of the street not cross to the other side men have to and especially boys have to recognize that masculinity is breaking up fights at bars not starting them that you always err on the side of protection with people who are more vulnerable or smaller than you, and women are physically smaller than men.

19:40Scott Galloway:What was the second part? Oh, the softness. So let me be clear. I just want to trigger some of your listeners.

19:46Simon Sinek:Yeah.

19:47Scott Galloway:This notion of the sensitive man, I think it's total bullshit. I don't think that's what women want. I think two sensitive people in the car leaves the parallel parking spot empty and two people in the car crying. I think there's a ton of evidence showing that women want a man who notices their life, who finds stages fit to a plot on them, who registers what's important to them becomes important to them. But I don't think women are looking for a sensitive man. And the majority of the information shows that women, while claiming they want a sensitive man, want a dude with a beard who's strong and is a little bit rough around the edges.

20:23Scott Galloway:Their sensitive man is called their gay best friend. The jerk and the aggressive guy is who they want to fuck.

20:28Simon Sinek:We're speaking in extremes here. You're creating this caricature of this sensitive man. What we're saying is somebody who's more sensitive. Yes, I understand. Notice is their life. I understand that men who are bold and have beards are strangely more attractive to women. You being bold with a beard, me being haired with no beard. The biggest aspect has nothing to do with seeing a woman or acknowledging her and all those things which you said are 100 % true. that has nothing to do with being a sensitive man or a not sensitive man.

21:00Scott Galloway:I think we're arguing semantics here. I tell, and we're going to agree on this, I tell men, young men, the ultimate aphrodisiac on a date is not money. It's not big muscles. It's follow-up questions. True. Listen and ask follow-up questions. True. I think there's some common ground here, but I think there's a cognitive dissonance, what we call in marketing, where people say, oh, I would pay$300 for that, and then they wouldn't pay$30 for it. Of course. What women say they want in a man, oftentimes to foot to who they decide to partner with and who they're drawn to sexually. And I'm not suggesting that men need to man up or demonstrate talk.

21:44Scott Galloway:There needs to be a reframing of what it means to be masculine. But one, figure out a way to be economically viable. Two, figure out a way to be strong physically. Three, you initiate contact. They just did this big survey on dating. They asked women, what bothers you most about being in a bar or in a single setting? The number two thing was that creeps approached me, right? The number five biggest complaint, nobody approaches me. You have to teach your boys how to make what I call the open. I used to do this with my boys. I wouldn't allow them back in the house unless they talked to a stranger.

22:21Scott Galloway:You have to be able to go up to a strange dude at your boarding school and say, hey, do you want to grab the game this weekend?

22:27Simon Sinek:Yeah.

22:27Scott Galloway:And be willing to get to know. You might get rejected. You have to be willing to go up to, I don't want to even say, like co-worker, everyone gets their hair on fire. One in three relationships begin at work. And if you don't know the difference between expressing interest and harassing someone, you have much bigger problems. And I think above a certain senior level, your fly is up and locked and you take that shit up campus. I deal with a lot of that kids to practice, especially young men, how to express platonic and romantic interests while

22:59Simon Sinek:making the other person feel safe is a skill we have.

23:02Scott Galloway:Because here's the bottom line, 80 % of women still expect men to make the approach. And unfortunately, sometimes the difference between a situation that is creepy and romantic is the perceived attractiveness of the person initiating. So there's got to be some overlap here where we acknowledge that some of that, I won't call it aggression, you taught me this, but initiation, some of that raw energy, some of that aggressiveness, some of that, I want to make a shit ton of money. I want to be really fucking strong. I want to run long distances and lift heavyweights in my mind in the gym. I think that's a pretty good way to go.

23:37Scott Galloway:And there's nothing toxic about it. And then the moment you have that type of strength or that economic viability, you move to protection.

23:44Simon Sinek:I think we're talking about a complete picture here, which is to make someone feel safe and protected, is all of those things. There's the sort of the very caveman physical protection, as you said, sort of the feeling of walking down the street and somebody's there, and the muscles and the money that you can provide for a family. But it's also the psychological safety at home, that I feel I can express my feelings and not get gaslit, or you can share your feelings so that this can be a functional relationship. And I feel psychologically safe in the relationship. And I think we're saying both things, and it goes back to that Marine Corps example, which is it's blended, and they may play different roles at different times.

24:18Simon Sinek:So maybe the initiation is one thing, but being in the relationship, you know, those things might shift a little bit, that you want that person who's bearded and muscular and bald to actually have the skills of listening and the ability to repair conflict, etc., in the relationship. So I think we're saying the same thing, but you don't necessarily need all those skills at every time, but at some point throughout the relationship, you got to have it all.

24:43Scott Galloway:Yeah, I think the far right has completed masculinity with coarseness and cruelty and blames women for men's problems. And I just think that's when a man's lost the script, when he blames an immigrant for his economic problems or a woman for his romantic problems. We should be celebrating our sisters and our mothers' ascent. This is a wonderful thing. It saved our economy in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. It's the reason we won World War II is we said, oh, women can build P-51s as well as men can, and we put them in the factories. Hitler did not. what i think we have now though is some mixed messaging that is confusing to young men and that is say well okay what's a good form of masculinity i hear the word vulnerability a lot yeah what is vulnerability we'll express your emotions be more sensitive you're describing the attributes we admire on women there has to be something in between the toxic or the weird masculinity performative masculinity on the right yeah and telling people to just act more like women.

25:37Scott Galloway:There has to be something that men can own that's aspirational. I tell my boys this, whenever you're around a woman, you pay for everything. And they're like, dad, that's so boomer. I'm like, okay, no woman's ever going to kiss you if you don't pay for her. And all the surveys show women expect, I'm fine paying half, he doesn't own me. No, you pay. There's no expectation of anything. She's not a prostitute. You're not a John. In every mammal, there's a mating process.

26:05Simon Sinek:Yeah, it's part of the culture.

26:06Scott Galloway:Her fertility window is shorter than yours. So her time is more valuable than yours. The downside of sex is much greater for her than for you. So her time is more valuable. And also just logistically, let me give you my beauty routine. I splash water on my face, maybe brush my teeth if I'm super excited. I don't know what that costs, but it's not a lot. For a woman to get ready for a date, you might be talking our 100 or 200 bucks in terms of extensions, hair, nails, Sephora. The expectations we place on women in terms of fashion and beauty is not only unrealistic, it's really fucking expensive.

26:42Scott Galloway:So one small means of demonstrating valor, that you're committed, that you register the asymmetry and the value of her time versus yours is you pay. And people go apeshit about that. I stand by it. Let me poke the bear a little bit.

26:57Simon Sinek:Your kids say that's so boomer dad, but dating rituals do change. And you and I are older. And you and I sort of have more traditional ways of dating, you know, and though statistically, it may work well, I would argue that when you're attracted to someone, all bets are off, right? Like when you're not attracted to someone, and they hold a door open for you, they're like, what, I can't hold my own door? You know, you think you think I can't do it? But if you're attracted to them, like, oh, what a gentleman, right? So to your point about the person who approaches you, whether they're creepy or not creepy, the attraction does matter, the chemistry, whatever it is.

27:34Simon Sinek:So a lot of it is sort of academic based on those initial things, those sort of hard to put words to things. Are dating rituals changing? Do we know enough about that, that maybe the younger kids do value different things, even though they do value things like safety and protection and those things that we're talking about, the manner in which they're expressed, maybe they are different. Maybe we are old. And maybe the way we're saying that you provide protection and you communicate those things is changing.

28:04Scott Galloway:I want to acknowledge that a guy my age doesn't even know what he doesn't know with respect to younger people. What I look at is the data.

28:11Simon Sinek:As a wise executive once told me, you know, data is like a bikini. It hides all the best bits.

28:19Scott Galloway:Well, okay. As Jim Barksdale, the CEO of AT &T and Netscape said, if we're going to go with opinions, let's go with mine. If we have data, let's look at the data. That's where I try to find my objective truth is in surveys and data. And what I find with respect to money and women being disproportionately evaluated unfairly on their aesthetics and men being disproportionately evaluated on their economic viability, I find it's actually gotten worse. Back when I was dating, most men did okay. If you went to UCLA, you had an okay job. I made a little bit more money than my friends because it was investment banking, but we all did okay.

28:52Scott Galloway:Now with Instagram, people feel like unless they're dating a dude that can take him to the amangani or take him and have the best seats in ibiza that he's not doing well and if i'm not a fucking supermodel with ridiculous a good job i mean women are basically told to be wonder woman now and men are told that if they don't make millions of dollars in crypto by the time they're 30 they're losers and i find that it's gotten worse. In terms of men getting their self-esteem from an unrealistic vision of their economic success and a woman being evaluated based on an unrealistic vision of her aesthetics with all this filters, what we have is your happiness is a function of your prosperity minus your envy.

29:37Scott Galloway:And all we have all day are algorithms meant to ramp up our envy and create unreasonable expectations around ourself and what we should expect in a partner. And then when you go to the digitization of the mating market, which consolidates it. When Amazon came along, 50 % of retail went to e-commerce. When Google came along, 93 % of search or information inquiry went to one. Now that we've digitized dating and the majority of relationships begin, or that's the number one source of connection is online dating, there's been a consolidation of metrics. And around men, it's essentially your ability to signal economic security and your height.

30:12Scott Galloway:And if you see these surveys with women that say, what are the bare minimum? Six foot, six figures. That's become a new thing. Six foot, six figures. That doesn't seem unreasonable. If you take out men over 50, men who are obese, men who are married, that's 4 % of the population. And then at the same time, the men who are in the top 10 % of dating get about somewhere between 60 % and 80 % of the interest, which means 80 % of the men fighting over a small number of women, which kind of, quite frankly, confirms their worst fears, validates their insecurities. So online dating has kind of been a disaster for young people.

30:48Scott Galloway:And this all leads to the same place and where my solutions are the following. I think we need mandatory national service where young people can meet people from different ethnic, income, religious backgrounds and realize how wonderful other young Americans are. I just spent time with an IDF battalion, a bunch of young, beautiful men and women handling heavy equipment, depending upon each other. That's where they meet friends, mentors and mates. Singapore, the most religiously diverse nation in the world. The leader there said we risk ethnic violence. So we need to create one flag that they all pray to.

31:17Scott Galloway:And that's the national flag. And so everybody in Singapore does national service. I think we need to put more money in young people's pockets. I think we need massive housing programs. I think we need$25 an hour minimum wage. and also we need tax credits for third places. Where do young people meet and fall in love? Generally speaking, young men aren't six feet and making a shit ton of money. But over time, the way women decide to mate or pair with these individuals is, he was really nice to his parents at church and I fell in love with him. He was great at work and he was so funny. He has the coolest friends.

31:54Scott Galloway:Women fall in love slowly, but where are the venues for men to demonstrate excellence now. They're not going to work. You are going to school and you have attendance to religious institutions is at all time low. Men are spending less time outdoors, men under the age of 30, than prison inmates. So where are the venues for men to demonstrate excellence to women who have a naturally much finer filter for mating selection? And the result is loneliness, a sex recession, people not connecting. And when people don't connect, they're much more likely to think ill of each other. They're much more likely, especially men, to start blaming other people for their problems.

32:33Scott Galloway:So I see loneliness and I see a rise of nationalism. I see economic harm around a lack of connection because we don't have third places for people to meet.

32:44Simon Sinek:I mean, a lot of the things that you talked about are social media driven, you know, the expectations of how tall I have to be, how beautiful I have to be, how rich I have to be, et cetera, and the increasing of insecurity and envy. And we're starting to see amongst young people a rebellion. We're starting to see people choosing to go offline. I think we're starting to see, and hopefully more of it, a rejection of online dating as the primary means of finding a partner. If it's in the mix, fine. And I completely agree with you in terms of mandatory service. One of the things that I've been learning as I've been learning about sort of friendship and everything, which is when there's more of a shared experience, people bond a lot quicker.

33:26Simon Sinek:So for example, if you join a tennis club, so you'll meet people, it actually doesn't work very well, because some people are great tennis players, some people are first time tennis players, and the great ones will hang out with the great ones and the first time like will feel insecure that they don't belong. But if you have a group where that's like new moms, right? So everybody there, regardless of their social class or whatever it is, their income, they're all new moms and all struggling with the same thing. And this idea of, I understand you, you understand me, actually increases the chance of bonding.

33:56Simon Sinek:And the idea of mandatory service, whether it's Teach for America or the military or something else, everybody's thrown in together. And you're right, there's lots of places in the world that have mandatory conscription. It's the great level planning field. It's the great leveler, because we're all coming in to do the same thing. We're starting from the bottom. Alcoholics Anonymous is kind of like that too. Like, you know, when you go to an AA meeting, it's kind of incredible, which is there's rich, there's poor, there's every color, there's every religion, but the bond is so intense because it's a unified single experience.

34:30Simon Sinek:And if confidence is the thing we're grappling with, that confidence allows me to be more relaxed, if confidence allows me to get rid of toxic masculinity, if confidence allows me to be more open to somebody else, if confidence allows me to be more expressive, to show my love for my parents at church and not be all like trying to hide it because I'm trying to be all tough, for example, I think it goes back to a lot of the stuff you're talking about, which is how do we help people, young people, build confidence?

34:59Scott Galloway:Yeah, look, nothing is more attractive and more important than confidence. And, you know, there's been a lot of studies done on it, whether it's sports, finding places that you can succeed, the irrational passion for your well-being or just straight-line affection. When I reverse engineer all of my blessings, it comes down to a small number of things that aren't my fault. The irrational passion of my well-being and my mother told me in implicit and explicit, small and big ways every day that I had value. Big government, Pell Grants, free education, and then an economy that gave unremarkable people huge opportunities, whether it was massive investments in technology with DARPA, access to capital, competitive markets where no one big company could put you out of business overnight.

35:46Scott Galloway:Most of my companies were built by immigrants. I feel like everything that gave me what I have now is under attack right now.

35:52Simon Sinek:Yeah.

35:52Scott Galloway:And also, I think there's just a ton of young men who have seen their economic and cultural standing really collapse. And I don't think that's going to be helpful. I don't think the country nor women are going to continue to flourish if men are flailing. But how do you give your kids confidence? That's a tough one, right? That's a bigger one. The advice I just have or I try and practice, you know, is just little things, right? It's affection. It's expressing how much you care about them. It's setting guardrails. It's having tough conversations. I love what First Lady Obama said. Basically, what she said is, we decided to be assholes so they wouldn't be assholes.

36:29Scott Galloway:I have really difficult conversations with my kids every day where it would just be so much easier to let them stay up till 2 a.m. and watch the Super Bowl. And I'm like, no, you're not. You got to go to sleep right now. And by the way, I'm disappointed you got to be on that science test. I know you can do better. I know we're supposed to be. Everyone's a winner. No, we have very hard conversations. But every day, first and last thing I say to them is I love them. They know I just I'm crazy about them and I think they have huge value. And I think over time that soaks into them. I'll try and get them playing competitive sports, trying to get my kids to work out like my dad did, trying to get them to be outdoors.

37:08Scott Galloway:I think being around people, others, creates moments of a lack of self-esteem, but over time increases your self-esteem. But I think the greatest self-esteem destroyer in history has been when social went on mobile. I think it's created so much envy, so many unrealistic expectations. The high school cafeteria is following around 24 by 7 in a mean way. Where the algorithms encourage young girls to sexualize themselves or encourage people to start fights where there don't need to be any or to find the weakest person in the thread and go after them. I can tell when my kid is really upset, I'll say to his mom, like, something happened on social media.

37:44Scott Galloway:It's not going to tell us about it. Something happened. And people will say, well, you're the parent. Just block social media. That means you don't have kids. There are studies showing if a kid doesn't have social media, he's even more depressed because he's ostracized from the community. There's no way to communicate. That's a longer question, Simon. And unfortunately, every parenting book I read contradicts the last one I read. But I know in terms of confidence, there's a few things you can do.

38:09Simon Sinek:I wonder if we're confusing some of the things. Like when you talk about sort of money and strength and muscles and being a provider and being a protector, though those things are true, I wonder if what it is is what we are truly attracted to in each other is confidence. whether it's projecting how confident we are and how we look and how we feel and how we dress, that's all projection of confidence, right? Or how much money we make or how strong we are, that's all projection of confidence. And if we overcompensate, like we come on too strong and we talk about the money too much, though in the short term, it may project confidence.

38:44Simon Sinek:But once we get to know each other, it all collapses. I wonder if that talking too much about money, muscles, and all of that kind of stuff is the false projection of confidence, where what we really should be talking about is actual self-confidence, which when you have it, even if you're not a 10 and you belong in a magazine, you like who you are and you know you have other attributes. And that comes across. And people are far more attracted to the confident person who may be a five or a six than the horrible person who's a 10 and looks, at least when you get past the first date. So, you know.

39:25Scott Galloway:But there's research here. So the reason why women are drawn. But it doesn't mean the research is leading us to the right conclusions. Right. But it's the closest thing I can find to an objective truth versus finding your favorite ring light therapist or gender study. I look at the data and I look at peer reviewed research and And the research around why women find muscles attractive is generally the following. It's not the aesthetic draw of the muscles themselves. It's what it says about the man. It says that he has some discipline. It says he can commit to something. It says he shows up, that he's dependable.

39:58Scott Galloway:You're in good shape, Simon. What does that mean? It means you have your shit together. It means that even if you have a few too many drinks one night, you're not feeling great, or you have a lot on your plate, you manage to get to the gym. That says something about your ability to be a good partner, a good provider, a good mate. There's been a lot of studies on what attributes are the sexual currency for men in the eyes of women. And they almost all distill down to kind of three basic truths. The number one signal, we don't like to talk about this, is the man's ability to signal resources. That's the bad news.

40:29Scott Galloway:The good news is the word signal. And that is, if you're a guy who's getting your graduate degree and you're the one that doesn't order a bottle of Grey Goose at two in the morning, you go home, you're thoughtful, you're considerate, you study hard, you have your shit together, you are signaling resources in the future. And by the way, the best relationships, in my view, are the relationships where you meet someone and you build something together. Because there's just a feeling of shared accomplishment that just binds you for the rest of your life, I find.

40:59Simon Sinek:By the way, if you talk to a lot of women, what you'll also find is they actually prefer men with slightly imperfect bodies, like a little bit of pudge, you know, good body, but not a perfect body. Because when they see online in a dating app, some guy with a perfectly chiseled, you know, abs and what that also signals is they care about themselves more than they care about anybody else, that they're very self-involved. So there is a line. Probably, I don't know.

41:24Scott Galloway:The number two thing, all right? Intellect. This is anthropological. People who make good decisions for the tribe, if you make really good decisions under pressure, your partner and your kids are more likely to survive. Women find intellect, and it can be storytelling. The reason why Mick Jagger gets to procreate with a 34-year-old ballerina is he's a great storyteller. Music is storytelling. We respect intellect. We respect creativity. People are really drawn to it. Quick quiz. What is the fastest way to communicate intellect, Simon? Is it through a story, Scott?

41:58Simon Sinek:Humor.

41:59Scott Galloway:If you can make a woman laugh, she'll have coffee with you. It was the only way I ever got dates when I was in high school and college was I made women laugh. Humor is an aphrodisiac for women. And then the number three, and this is the most under-leveraged, unknown currency of sexual attractiveness for men, and it's their secret weapon, kindness. this whole notion of the bad boy effect that might be a turn on the short run women want to partner with men they perceive as kind all of these things that you're talking about sort of humor and

42:31Simon Sinek:kindness these aren't the masculine traits that you started talking about these are more softer traits these are softer skills yeah i think of kindness is at the end of the day planting trees

42:43Scott Galloway:the shade of which you'll never sit under and it's like what's the difference between being kind and nice you might be sitting across the table from someone being really nice to them and telling them how good looking they are and da da da. All right. She senses that maybe this guy just wants to have sex with me and is, you know, boosting me. Are you nice to service staff? Do you go out of your way to be kind? Are you patient when the Uber driver takes the wrong turn to the airport?

43:06Simon Sinek:Yeah.

43:07Scott Galloway:Do you purposely go out of your way to just do things for people who will never be able to do anything for you back? People smell that. And by the way, I have trouble with that. I wasn't born a kind person. I started a kindness practice on purpose when I was about 44. And I said, every day I'm going to start. And it's something you can teach yourself. It starts becoming reflex memory. But men don't realize if you aren't instinctively a kind person, you need to start a kindness practice. Women notice when you're nice to your mom. Women notice when you hold doors open for other people. And it's not performative.

43:42Scott Galloway:It's not about the evolved man. It's not about the guy who has more subscriptions to the Atlantic or is in touch with himself. It's signaling resources, it's intellect, and it's kindness.

43:51Simon Sinek:And to your point, anybody can learn to be kind. It's a practice. Anybody can learn. What's that? You can't learn to be funny. But this is what you can do. You can't learn to be funny. Okay.

44:03Scott Galloway:But it's a double edged sword.

44:04Simon Sinek:Because I'm not funny. I can be funny, but I'm not funny.

44:09Scott Galloway:You can have a great sense of humor, even if you aren't intuitively funny. And how do you do that? You laugh a lot. Someone says something really funny or sort of funny, you laugh out loud. People love to be around people who laugh a lot, right? You know that guy who has that crazy or that woman who has that crazy infectious laughter? People love to be around that person. That person's a good time. When someone says something funny, it's like leaning into your emotions. I didn't do this. I had some fucked up sense of masculinity when I was young where I never showed my emotions. didn't cry between the ages of 29 and 44, didn't laugh out loud.

44:42Scott Galloway:Now when something moves me, I try to lean in. I try to get emotional. If it makes me feel emotional, I don't hold back. And when someone says something funny, I purposely try to train myself into laughing out loud. Because 50 % of having a good sense of humor is appreciating other people's cleverness.

44:57Simon Sinek:Okay, so you and I are very different personalities. I would dare say opposite. And we get along and we like each other because of shared values and shared commitments and those kinds of things. I would argue that you learning to express yourself, and I'm going to take crying off the table. That'll be a gimme, right? I'm going to take crying off the table. But you learning to laugh, I would argue, is you learning to be more sensitive. It's you learning to be vulnerable. I think learning to laugh, which is an emotion, that's an expression of something you're feeling on the inside, I would argue is vulnerability.

45:37Scott Galloway:I hadn't thought of it that way. I think it's more when you're a younger man, sometimes you have this belief that recognizing someone else is funny, acknowledging someone else's success, acknowledging someone else's personal style, acknowledging another man's good looks somehow takes away from your success. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That it's a zero-sum game, that accomplishment and attractiveness and success are a zero-sum game. And what you realize as you get older is the guy who says to another guy, wow, you're so impressive, or like, I love that jacket, or dude, you're so fucking ripped. Good for you, man.

46:13Scott Galloway:Or laughs at his joke and says, wow, that was really funny. That's confidence.

46:18Simon Sinek:Yes, you're describing confidence. It's 100%. That's all it is. So Steven Spielberg said that there are more people who win Oscars who thank him that he didn't help than the people who he actually helped. Right? So somebody who he helped, like give him a break, give him a leg up, make introduction, whatever it is, that they'll win an Oscar and they don't thank him from the stage. But people who he's never met will thank him because of his inspiration and whatever he provided. And the theory being that these people who have this amazing accomplishment, this Oscar, that if they thank Steven Spielberg for the break he gave them, that somehow it devalues their accomplishment.

46:58Simon Sinek:And to your point, this is a lack of self-confidence. It takes tremendous self-confidence to say, thank you, or I couldn't have done this alone. You and I both know this, which is the best leaders take accountability when things go wrong and they distribute when things go right. The best leaders that you and I both know when something goes incredibly right, they take zero credit. They're like, no, no, no, it was my team. It was my team. I have an amazing team. And when shit goes sideways, they're like, on me, on me. And that is nothing more than an expression of confidence. Nothing. And so it goes right back to where we started, which is, though I agree with you and I can't argue the data, that conspicuous display of potential and the ability to provide or good looks or good genetics, you know, signals, you know, we're going to have a strong, healthy kid, you know, all of that stuff.

47:52Simon Sinek:I can't argue with that. But though it can be argued that, you know, the generations change in how we relate and how we date and all of the, maybe the way that you and I dated when we were kids is very different now. I think the thing that underlies all of it, that we have to focus on in ourselves and helping our friends and our kids build is confidence. And that's the thing that I'm more obsessive about, which is what are the mechanisms to help somebody build confidence over telling them the actions they need to perform or the superficial things they need to achieve in order to superficially communicate confidence.

48:27Build the real thing rather than just the communication of that thing. I'm going to say it's a fine line, but the thing, look, you want your kids,

48:37Scott Galloway:especially if someone raising kids, you want them to have an innate sense of confidence and self-esteem and boundaries around how they're treated such that I think more confident people will be more likely to be generous, loving people to other people. You definitely want that. I think right now, as big a threat, maybe a bigger threat is I find a lot of the people that control our economy, especially our tech platforms, credit their character and their grit for their success and blame the markets and other people for their failures.

49:09Simon Sinek:Of course.

49:10Scott Galloway:Their confidence has turned into arrogance and a lack of appreciation for the struggles that other people face.

49:15Simon Sinek:Yeah.

49:15Scott Galloway:So I find, at least the people I think about, have almost a pathological ability to believe that they overcame everything, all these obstacles to become billionaires while not recognizing that, again, a lot of their success is not their fault.

49:35Simon Sinek:Yeah. Scott, I could actually talk to you for a long time. Let me ask you a couple more questions here just to close it out. What's the truth about happiness you wish you'd learned 20 years ago?

49:47Scott Galloway:Happiness is a sensation. I can get it from Edibles and Netflix. I could be happy in an hour. No problem. Purpose is what you want to pursue. And purpose, I have found, and it's not the right answer for everybody, but I have found purpose in developing the skills, the strength, and the wherewithal to establish a relationship with someone and raise who I think are going to be patriotic loving men. That is my purpose. So I can find happiness pretty easily because it's a sensation, but what I would suggest is try and find purpose. And all the economic aspirations and AI and GDP and salary and negotiating for a salary and all that and stock options.

50:32Scott Galloway:It's all a means. The ends is such that you can have an absence of economic security, such you can have deep and meaningful relationships. And I didn't figure that out until I was older. But that's where I find purpose. That's what I pursue.

50:45Simon Sinek:Amen. Over the past few years, your work has explored male loneliness. What do you think men, especially young men, need right now but don't have the language to ask for?

50:55Scott Galloway:The term risk is important for young men, and that is men are taking way too much risk on gaming and gambling sites. They're taking too many risks with the strident and aggressive things they say online, and they're not taking enough risks offline. They're not applying for jobs they shouldn't get. They're not applying to college. They're not getting out of the house. They're not approaching other impressive people and expressing an interest in friendship. They're not approaching potential romantic partners and expressing interest. That risk has a greater return in certain venues than other. Taking huge risks on Coinbase or on Robinhood or on betting platforms are really bad risks, but you need to take more risks with people outside of the house.

51:37Scott Galloway:The only way you get to a great yes, the only way you get to a great job, a great school, a partner who's higher character and better looking than you is by risking a ton of public failure and a ton of no's. Anyone who's gotten a great yeses has endured dozens, if not hundreds of no's. You need to reallocate your risk.

51:54Simon Sinek:Amen. Social risk. Scott Galloway, you always make me think. You always challenge me. I always appreciate any time I get with you. Thank you very, very, very much.

52:04Scott Galloway:Thanks, Simon. I love spending time with you. Whenever I want to get together with Simon, he blows me off. It's like high school again, literally. Hold on. First of all, the last time you invited me out,

52:14Simon Sinek:let's just back off there first of all you never text me ever and invite me out ever i invite you number one number two the last time you took the initiative to invite me out you said do you want to go out for a drink i said i'd love to you go great i'll meet you in an hour i'm like i can't meet you in an hour and then you're like such an insecure chick right now you never go out with me

52:34Scott Galloway:so like you know you know that's not true you can't hold that against you i wanted to meet you and instead I sent you nude selfies. Everything is true except the last part there, folks. I saved them, by the way. So let's cause some trouble. Let's find the dark side of Simon Sinek. I don't buy this whole groovy you and me thing. I'm like, I think there's a dark side to you. Of course there is. I want to explore that. I don't deny it. All right, let's find it. Let's go there.

53:02Simon Sinek:You're the bitter, angry one. I'm not. But I'm transparent about my bitterness and my anger. I'm transparent about my bitterness and my anger. I just have less of it.

53:09Scott Galloway:I don't see it. I don't think that's what you started from.

53:12Simon Sinek:You don't trust people who won't get drunk.

53:14Scott Galloway:I like to drink. It's a flaw. Yeah. No, no, I don't mind that you like to drink.

53:19Simon Sinek:You said to me point blank, I don't trust people who don't drink or don't get drunk.

53:25Scott Galloway:I wouldn't say I don't trust them. I have a more difficult time bonding with them. That's my problem. But I think young people need to drink more and make a series of bad decisions that might pay off.

53:33Simon Sinek:I've never been drunk and I've made many bad decisions.

53:37Scott Galloway:but the anti-alcohol movement and the remote work movement, I think are actually bad for young people. 6 % of teenagers and young adults are addicted to drugs or alcohol. 24 % are addicted to social media.

53:49Simon Sinek:I know why you want people to drink because the chance for social risk goes up and we're talking about taking social risk. And so the social lubricant that is alcohol allows for the increase in social risk. And you will discover when you have a few too many drinks, you get a little tipsy and you ask that person out, or you say something charming, God forbid, to a stranger, and you realize nothing happens, that the next morning you can be like, it worked and I'm still alive. It's that it increases social risk, which is what you're actually talking about. I would simply posit that some people need the alcohol and not everybody does.

54:24Scott Galloway:I think that's fair. But anyways, I look forward to seeing you and getting fucked up.

54:28Simon Sinek:I look forward to it. All right, brother. A Bit of Optimism is a production of The Optimism Company. Lovingly produced by our team, Lindsay Garbenius, Phoebe Bradford, and Devin Johnson. Subscribe wherever you enjoy listening to podcasts, and if you want even more cool stuff, visit simonsynic.com. Thanks for listening. Take care of yourself. Take care of each other.