#794 - Scott Galloway - The 4 Secrets To Get Rich In A Broken Economy

24:59It doesn't mean anything. Whereas in 2008, when I was running or when my biggest investment was a public e -commerce company called Red Omplip, which was doing really well at the time, when I met with my investment bank, I think I owned 10 million in stock and I said, well, how much can I borrow against it? And I said, you could probably borrow 3 million and they said, what are you going to do with it by how it's done? I'm like, no, I'm going to buy more Red Omplip stock. And Steve Bomber did the same thing with Microsoft and it worked out. You should assume you're not Steve Bomber because when my company went bankrupt and met that I owed three million dollars I went from being worth ten million to owing three million the tax on my emotional and mental well -being was enormous and diversification is your Kevlar Because you don't need to be a hero you need don't need to find the needle in the haystack You can buy the whole haystack and again see above time will go fast You'll be financially secure and connamen wrote about loss of version theory the joy you'll get from being smart enough to pick Nvidia two years ago, which most of us were not.

25:58The joy you'll get of like a lack of diversification in the potential upside it offers is a fraction of the pain you will feel when Nvidia gets cut by 90%. So for your own financial well -being, much less your own mental well -being, embrace diversification. Because now I just don't, I don't want to say I don't think about my investments. I'm constantly looking for new opportunity. But because I never put more than 3 % in any one thing, it's like, give me your best shot. I can take anything. It's a bullet to the chest when it goes to zero. But I got Kevlar. Yeah, knocks me off my feet. And then I get up and I got a bruise and I'm like, I'm fine.

26:34Nothing's ever critical, much less fatal. Whereas before when I got shot in the chest in 2000, the dog bomb explosion or implosion in the great financial recession in 2008, I almost never could get up again. I mean, I came very close to just never getting up again. So focus, find what you're good at, double down on it,

26:57diversification, stoicism, save more than you or spend less than you make. So you can save and appreciate just our powerful time and compound interest is. And the kind of the way I would wrap it up is I know how to get you rich. That's a good news. The bad news is slowly. And then it's all wrapped in, and I didn't know how to put this into equation, but I call wealth a full person project. And that is there's a myth that really wealthy people crawled over other people to get there, that their billionaire is lighting their cigars with $100 bills, that's bullshit. The majority of self -made people are actually good people.

27:30They're high character, and the reason why is, if you want to be really wealthy, you need to collect allies along the way. People have to want to put you in a room of opportunities, even when you're not physically in the room. They want to give you the benefit of the doubt. They want to go easy on you when you fuck up. They want to include you in deals. They want to come to work with you. They want to present opportunities to you And the only way that's going to happen is if you show generosity and character from from an early age So like I said greatness greatness and wealth is in the agency of others It's interesting to think about um The stuff that doesn't appear on a balance sheet the difference between working hard and character And just how much of a a lever that is you know coming from running nightclubs for forever but all we had were our networks.

28:14That was it. That actually was the primary asset. It's the reason why events companies can't just pick up and move themselves somewhere else because you don't own anything beyond your reputation in the local geographic net of that particular city. We go from Newcastle where we've got one of the biggest events companies in the North of the UK and we go to Birmingham, well who the fuck's voodoo events? Who the fuck are you? You don't know us. There's a voodoo event that's been there for 15 years with some guy that's met in shuck hands with a million people. I met a million people on the front door of nightclubs.

28:45That was all that we knew. And yeah, thinking about, I mean, that's a good point. How would you advise young guys and girls? How can they become, how can people become better networkers? What are the skills of being a good networker? I bet you know more about this than me. I would say it's being friendly, being open, being honest, transparent, and quite frankly, I find the key to punching above your way class is not, I mean, sure it's grit. It's some talent, but more than anything, I think it's the willingness and maybe this is grit to endure rejection. If you're a club promoter, you've got to be comfortable going up to strange women and saying, hi, and introducing yourself and saying there's a great party here or putting up with some douchebag asshole who's spending a lot of money and giving you a hard time and putting your own ego aside because he bought a bottle he thinks he's you know fucking Prince Charles.

29:48You're just gonna have to be willing to get out of spoon and eat a lot of shit and I've always said to the kids in my class and I tell the story, I tell the following story. When I was, I just moved in New York on weekends, I go down to South Beach in Miami and I got an apartment in the continuum and I used to go out and I went to the Raleigh Hotel and I walked in and I saw a woman I was very attracted to. Anyone who's been attracted to, she was very attractive. And I promised myself I am going to speak to that woman before I leave this hotel. And it was in the middle of the that a DJ was a pool party at the Raleigh Hotel.

30:27And I'm like, oh fuck, she's talking to it. She's with a woman and a guy. I don't know how to open and I walked out. I was at the Vallei and I'm like, fuck, you promise yourself so I went back and I just went up to him, right up to him and said, where you guys from? It was, long story short, 18 months later, our son's middle name is Raleigh. And what I tell people is, unless you're willing to take uncomfortable risks, you're never gonna put yourself in a position of economic or professional or romantic success. Or you'll never be his way. You're never going to punch above your way class. And so your ability to endure rejection, your ability to put yourself in uncomfortable situations is absolutely, you know, people have different words for it, scrappy, right?

31:04But if you want, unless you have an unbelievable certification and you come out of, like, if you come out of MIT Business School and you're an AI prompt engineer, you don't need to have much grit. I mean, maybe you got grit going there, but Microsoft's coming for you to offer you a world of opportunity. For the other 99 .9 % rest of us get used to emailing people who will not email you back. And then when they say they're not interested, assume that that means they want to hear from you a month later. Right? The amount, the secret to my success is rejection. I applied to nine schools, business schools.

31:37I got into two, really just one, one put me on the waiting list. I can't tell you how much rejection I've endured from women. I mean, it's staggering. I ran for sophomore junior and senior class president. I lost all three times and based on my track record, I decided to run for student body president where I went on to wait for it lose. And I've started nine businesses. Most of them have failed. One out of seven businesses succeed. So I started nine and two and two won and that's all you need. All you need is one good mentor, a few good friends, one wonderful mate, one business that works. But to get there means putting yourself in a position of rejection over and over and And here's the thing that sounds easy.

32:21Most people will not do what you did in Newcastle, or was a Newcastle, is that what you said? They're not gonna go up to strangers and say, hey, there's a great party Friday night. You should come. Here's the thing on it. Texting back and forth. Give me a credit card if you want a table. I mean, people just, the majority of people, 99 % of people will not do that. That's why in any company, the most overcompensated people, relative to their IQ and their work ethic are the sales people. And this is what they have in common. They either played with the wrong toys or the right toys, and they will get out that spoon and start calling people that don't want to hear from them.

32:58And then following up, pretending to be their friend, being nice to them when they're not nice back, that is the key in my view to success. If you're Kanye or Madeline Albright or Stephen Hawking, you're going to be fine. Assume you are not that person. A much more reliable route to success is just resilience and an ability to each shit. I went back into a way that you can view on your phone, you can see the number of messages that you've sent and received on WhatsApp. And I went in before I wiped it when I exited the events company. I went in and I'd sent and received, I'd received six million and sent four million WhatsApp messages while I'd been on that last phone, four million WhatsApp messages.

33:41And almost all of them had been sent via fingertip. When I first launched this podcast. I went through, I think I might have about a thousand people in my dress book and I went through every single one of them and sent them the same message which was, hey, I've just released this podcast, would you mind subscribing on Apple Podcasts with a thousand different contacts, most of whom I hadn't seen forever. But that was just baked into the blood of what I'd kind of done. That was part of the, it was just part of the course. You message random people. That's how you get them to come to your nightclub.

34:10So yeah, basically what we're saying is everybody should become a club promoter for a couple of years, and then they can be. I think there's, I would love my kids. I want to do, I'm really hoping that the election in America turns out one way and I'm thinking about taking my 16 year old to do canvassing. Canvassing is knocking on doors and trying to get people to register to vote and then telling them, I'm here with the Biden campaign. In a few times, there's a pit bull and there's someone who is not a Biden supporter and it is really uncomfortable and really unpleasant and you have to be polite and they slam the door in your face and they'd have to go to the next house.

34:45I think that is really important for a young person to learn those skills, to recognize that was really uncomfortable. And then 10 minutes to realize, I'm fine. The first time it happens, you're traumatized. The second time it happens, you're like, whatever. Third time it happens, you're angry at the person. But the time that 20th time happens, you're like, I don't care, I'm fine. I'm fine. Oh, you can laugh about it. Yeah. I'm fine. That is an unbelievably powerful skill. And what you do, you do, you I mean, I did something very every business I've ever started. I started a strategy firm when I was 26, trying to sell strategy engagements into fortune 1000 companies.

35:24And I would write a letter. I would sit down and I would write a letter to William Snowman and say the growth potential in this brand is West Elm Office. Home Office is gonna be huge. West Elm is a privileged position for it. Here are the SKUs. Here's your distribution strategy, your capital strategy, how you would signal. know, and I would basically do a strategy engagement. And then I would send it via FedEx. I, you know, this was word processing, you know, not a lot of email back then, some email and not a lot. This was 30 years ago when I was 26. And I sent them a letter with this like strategy engagement and say, this is free.

36:00And the next one, if you have other big hairy questions you want answered, you know, call me. And most of the time you're working, You're putting in, you know, I don't know, four or eight hours to write these things up. I can do this stuff pretty quickly. I have an aptitude for it. And most of the time you never hear back, you call them and the system say, oh, yeah, we found it. We don't know what it was. We threw it out. Please don't call us again. And occasionally I would get a meeting with the CEO of Levi's and Bremen and say, we're trying to figure out the gray market problem. People are buying 501s and JFK and taking them to Germany.

36:32And, you know, consulting is giving me your hardest questions. and I'm going to try and answer them thoughtfully. And I built a big consulting firm by cold calling CEOs. And I wouldn't just cold call them. I do a prospective engagement for them. And most of the time it was kind of humiliating. Let me get this. I spent all Sunday telling dryers ice cream how they should discover new flavors and that they should be thinking about using Nestle for their distribution. All the shit. And it occasionally would hit. If you're not willing to do that, never we're going to punch them up your way class. How important is physical fitness to financial health?

37:11Well, you know the studies here, the only thing that Americans have most in common, unfortunately, is obesity or overweight. The thing, Fortune 500 COs have most in common is they work out every day. It's not Ivy League schools, it's not even gender, it's not race. According to the 500 Fortune 500 COs, about 485 of them work out five times a week. They don't even work out every day. they work out almost every day. So I mean, you're the prime example of this. You prioritize, I would imagine other than this podcast, you prioritize fitness, probably over everything. And I, look, more, less mental illness, more attracted potential mates, you signal, I mean, I even think I'm curious what you think here, but in terms of the mating market, I think instead of, instead of aesthetically and instinctually, people are drawn to men who look stronger fast because they're more likely, they're younger, more likely to survive, with someone strong guarding the cave or whatever.

38:09But in addition to that, even in a modern day, women are still attracted to very strong men because what it says is, I can commit to something. I have discipline. I show up. I have the ability to get home at a reasonable hour without getting fucked up every night because I'm going to work out the next day. I really like myself, which means I'm capable of liking someone. And if I really like myself and respect myself, I likely can like and respect someone else. Yeah, I think physical fitness and going to the gym is as much about the lifestyle and the kind of person that you are in order to be able to achieve that physique.

38:47The signal of that is it is the actual way that your body's going to feel when you've got your clothes off. You know, you're reliable, you're dependable, you are able to use your own agency to do things, yourself motivated, you have a routine, you are able to deal with discomfort and pain, which is kind of in itself sexy and reliable, all of these things. Yeah, I just think it's, in all of that, it's been my anti -depressant. I have sort of this, I don't know if you have this, I don't know. You know, I struggle with anger and oppression, and I finally got better at managing it, and I can recognize when I'm going into a dark place.

39:26I just start getting really, I start having a feeling, I'm going to be like, I'm going really ugly thoughts and pissed off the people all the time, really angry myself, see everything just really dark and I'm like, oh, okay, I'm going dark. And right when I have that feeling, I'm going dark, I know I have a method for how I'm out of deal with it. And I use an acronym, it's called SCAFA. And the first thing is sweat. Like sweat right away. If you're in that dark place, sweat right away. I find sweating is like restarting a computer. I don't know the fucks going on, turn it off and on. That's what I do.

39:56I reset my brain by sweating. See as clean. I try and eat really clean. I stop eating out. I find all that the preservatives, the sugar, the shit, the salt, to basically have a food explosion in your mouth for whatever reason I think is not great for me mentally. A abstinence, and what I mean by abstinence is abstinence from THC and alcohol. I love both of these things. I'm pretty good at them. But if I'm in a bad headspace, I just give my sensors a break from that stimuli Eli. F for family, I find being around my boys is really healthy for me because my boys and children generally are so awful and so demanding that it forces you to take yourself out of yourself.

40:35You don't have the luxury of focusing on how upset or pissed off you are because your kids demand your full attention. Less so as they go to older, but especially when they're younger. And then the A, last day of scaff is affection. I will tell my boys, I'm not feeling really well, and when I'm not feeling really well, I want you to be affection with me. What does that mean? When you sit down on the couch, I'm like, you throw your legs over mine. I want you to sit close to me on the couch. I want to watch TV with you. I've told my kids, especially as a little bit older, like I get, sometimes I get upset and down, and it really helps me to be close to you guys.

41:10And they're great about it now. And not like that, even when I'm not upset, they're really, we've got kind of used, we've normalized affection in my household, which is like, which really is my favorite. Right, that's amazing. Oh, it's wonderful. It really is. I didn't grow up in an affectionate household. My parents were British and Scottish, and they just didn't, and I could tell my mom really wanted to hug me. I could just tell she just wanted to, but kind of, it was just hard for her because she just hadn't been raised that way. My dad used to, his way of affection was, he'd scruff up my hair, but I could tell he also wanted to hug me.

41:42But that, and then also, affection with my dogs. You know, when I'm down, I let my dogs on the couch and let them just kind of, you know, dogs just want to lie on you, Basically, they'll just like wrap themselves around you. But I have a means of getting me out of that dark place of arresting that downward spiral. But this all comes back to the first thing hands down, sweat. And when I'm traveling and I have jet lag, I have first thing I'm trying to do and it's really hard. Sometimes I do, so I mean, last 48 hours I've been London, Las Vegas, and here in New York. As soon as I get somewhere, I try to do a little bit of exercise or resistance training, even if it's just doing 100 push -ups.

42:16But it's such a gift because basically the way I see it is you have this monitor in your brain saying are you adding any value? And the bad news is it's on 24 hours a day registering if you're adding any value the good news is it can be easily fooled and If you do a ton of pushups or start sweating. It's like oh, he's hunting prey. It's a thing Yeah, and he's used he's hunting prey. He's he's building housing. He's important to the community. Let's keep him emotionally stable, let's release a hormone that clears out the bad cholesterol. Oh, they're caregiving. They're being affectionate. We need those people around.

42:50Oh, mentally stimulated or the crossword puzzle are working really hard. This person's making key decisions. You want to die? It's pretty easy. You don't need to shoot yourself. Just do a whole lot of fucking nothing alone. Just do nothing alone. Don't work out. Don't move. Don't talk to people. Just be alone doing nothing. And the security camera in your brain is going to go, you're adding no value. We'll take care of this. How have you learned to forgive yourself when you fall short? You've got high standards, you want to achieve lots of things. How do you not cast to get yourself too hard when you fall short of those high standards?

43:24You're positioning in a generous way where I have high standards for myself. I think it comes from a worse place. I think it's just chemical. I think about depression. I listen to Sam Harris a lot. The past is the most immutable thing ever. There's literally nothing we can do about it. and I spent way too much time in the past. I'll think about what we did here and I'll realize two, three, four things that could have been better and I'll think about it way too much. I was on stage yesterday in Vegas in front of like, you know, 2000 people. I used the word fuck too much. I was too profane. I was fine.

43:57I got, I read it really well. But I'm like, do I really need to drop F -bombs five times? Maybe once or twice to make a point. But why am I being so profane? There's probably 5 % or 10 % of the audience who's religious, who I just sort of really turn off. And I'm just like on the whole flight home, I'm just like, okay, I mean, I'm not learning from it, I'm like beating myself up. And I'm constantly, constantly in the past. And then as someone who's successful, I'm constantly in the future. I know exactly what I have to do tomorrow for my newsletter. I'm already thinking about ways, turns of phrase.

44:37I know what I do when I get off this podcast, I'm going to hit Google Doc. I've already had a couple new thoughts. And that's important. But the fear, right, is you get to the end. And as an atheist, I do think at some point I'll look into my kids eyes and know our relationships coming to an end. The fear is like, wow, I was so much in the past, so much in the future that I was never really there. It's like, did my life happen, right? And so what I've tried to do is I've tried to learn from my colleague Adam Altar at NYU who said, the biggest regrets of the dying, I mean, he goes in a palliative care and he talks people are days away from death.

45:13One, they wish it stayed in better touch with their friends. Two, they wish they'd lead the life. They wanted to lead not the life that their parents wanted or society wanted. And then three, first and foremost, they wish they'd been less hard on themselves. They wish they'd been kinder. They wish they'd take taken stock of their blessings and allowed themselves to be happy and that really haunted me when I heard that I'm like I'm just I'm trying to refuse the failure of getting to the end and Being stupid and I'm reading Bill Mars book Bill Mars sort of a Real model slash hero of mine. It's so funny when I say that on threads threads is so woke people just come for me and call them I'm like Jesus Christ Bill Mars is not the problem But in this book he has this great line and he says I can't imagine anything stupider Then people focusing on what's wrong with their life And on a scale of zero to a hundred on a balanced scorecard.

46:04I'm running it about a 97 or 98 I mean people who I love immensely who love me immensely economic security. I'm healthy. I live in New York I just I want what do I live in London? Where am I? And I am so focused on the two or three points that aren't perfect. And that is just, you know what that is? That's stupid. And I'm trying to make sure that I don't really regret at that moment going, oh, I failed. So I'm bottom line is I'm trying to forgive myself. And also what the Stoic say, no one's thinking about your failures as much as you, something that really helps me is it saying nothing's ever as good or as bad as it seems.

46:46and whenever I screw up, I'd said something really stupid and aborted me the other day. I was trying to be funny and it was just offensive and like, fuck. And what I realized is like, okay, put yourself in the shoes of someone in that room. And generally what you find is when you do something stupid or say something stupid, people go, oh, that was stupid. And then about three seconds later, they go back to thinking about themselves. And the stupid thing that they did recently. Yeah, they're just, and they're totally focused on themselves. And all you have to think about is when someone does something embarrassing, yeah, you go, oh, that was stupid.

47:16and then three seconds later, you're back to you. And just realize no one's thinking about, I mean, think about the people, think about the most successful people in the world and how many just ridiculously fucking stupid or bad things have happened to them in terms of scandal or set things the wrong way or behaved inappropriately. I mean, shit that just would have brought most people down. And the reason they're successful is fairly and fairly short order. They mourn in the move on and they're like, oh, I'm awesome again. I'm awesome. I'll run, I'll run for president again. I cause an insurrection.

47:46Okay, so what? I've been found guilty of rape. I'll run for president again. I mean, shamelessness, you know, at that point it's no longer a superpower, you're villain. But the willingness or the ability to forgive yourself, you're gonna really wish you'd embrace that much earlier at an older age. Tactically, what does that look like to you when you're trying to do that? Because I don't disagree. I'm very harsh on myself. I have a hard time feeling proud about the things that I do, if there is something that goes well, I will find part of it that has gone wrong, gone badly. I always have this weird ambience sense that I'm in trouble, that I've done something wrong that like that that that that that that someone's mad at me.

48:27I've got this sort of ambience sense that someone's mad at me. And yet, I think all of the things that you just explained that look, we only have the present moment. I don't need to be in ruminating about the past. I don't need to be in fearing the future. I have this life right now. Everybody that's listening, these are the golden years. How do you bring yourself back to not ruminating about swearing too much on stage in Vegas or saying a shit joke in a board meeting? What are the things, the practice, and what's the scaffer equivalent that you do to try and enjoy your life more? Well, I don't know if it's the right way, but it's my way, but I embraced atheism in kind of my 30s.

49:02I used to say it was an agnostic, which I think are just closeted of atheists. And I thought, okay, I generally believe this is it. I don't think this is a dress rehearsal. And so if you're the might on a plum on an unremarkable planet circling a fairly mundane star that's one of 10 billion stars and one of a hundred billion galaxies in your here, not even at a blank, it's like, why wouldn't you just squeeze all the juice of joy out of the lemon? Why wouldn't you? So why wouldn't you just, you are so trivial and you're going to be gone. I believe that. That's it. No one's ever going to think about you again.

49:43You're never going to take a run. You're never going to be with friends. You're never going to have sex with your wife again. You're never going to feel accomplishment. You're never going to be able to help anybody else. So in that short amount of time, why wouldn't you just try and feel a sense of reward and joy, especially if you're born in America, which I was or can live in America, especially If you're, you know, have people who love you. I mean, you're in the 99 .99 % tower realistically. You're here in a blank. Why would you do everything you could to recognize like some joy from it? It would just be so selfish, stupid, wasteful not to enjoy it, recognizing you're going to be gone.

50:23You're totally insignificant. So in this minute flash of significance or existence, and why wouldn't you just, just like I said, just like squeeze the shit? I'm spending more money than I've ever spent. I'm like, okay, I'm either gonna spend it or give it away and I'm absolutely loving it. And I know that sounds kind of crass, but I'm like, well, why wouldn't I? Literally, why wouldn't I? There's so many amazing things you can do with money. I'm trying to be much more open and emotive with my emotions. I've seen somebody I don't even know that well and they do a great, I've met a couple of not celebrities, but fairly as celebrities, famous people.

51:02And I see them on Sunday morning on their program and they make a great point. And before I'd be like, oh, that guy's a baller, it doesn't matter. Now I'm like, you were fucking amazing. I'm like, God, you're so good. Or I do now, I try and do more of that with the young people in my firm. I try to make memos in myself. Makes me feel wonderful, makes them feel great, especially young people who need a lot of watering. And I feel like I'm just racking up good feelings. And then the other thing I absolutely love is these, I forget what you call these photo albums, these AI photo albums on Apple, where they play with schmaltzied music in the background pictures.

51:38The ones you mean. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I can't wait. When I'm at the end, I want to make a lot of money, so I basically, you know, I've died home with people I love surrounding me and I'm going to do a shit ton of heroin and I'm just going to play those Apple. I'm going to live my life again. and I love those things. And if I'm down, I just look at those things. It makes me feel majestic and nostalgic, but I lean into the emotion. But just to recognition, nothing's ever as good as bad as it seems. And the recognition of a finite nature, the finite nature of an atheism is very emboldening. It really liberates me.

52:12It's like, this is it, boss. This is it. What a failure if you don't enjoy it. What a failure if you don't forgive yourself. So I would say more than anything, my atheism is really kind of unlocked. Unlocked joy for lack of a better term. Yeah, there's a seriousness if this is the only time you're going to get to do it. You mentioned that about spending money given that you're someone who's been spending money for quite a while. What have you learned is and is not worth spending money on in life? Oh, well, the research is there and you know this research. People overestimate the happiness, things will give them and they underestimate the happiness experiences together.

52:48I don't own a car not because I'm concerned with the environment or because I'm trying to be less about shit I just don't want to know I think I manage So I'm all about I'm generous with everything except my time in a car takes my time I'm spending a ridiculous amount of money on travel I'm And not only going on to great places, but I'll call my sisters turning 50 call her Her husband she has two kids and like we're going to Africa Okay. This Christmas just fucking figured out, you know, the kids got a choir, they always have excuses, they're done, I'm like, no, no, no, no, we're going to Africa.

53:23We're just gonna figure it out. It's gonna cost an insane amount of money, insane. And they do really well, not as well as me, so I'm paying for everything. It's gonna be just a crazy amount of money. And I'm like, well, okay, why wouldn't I have the money? So I, experiences, I wanna play. And if I always tell my friends, I'm a yes to everything with the right to back out. Oh, Formula One on Las Vegas. I'm in. I'm yes. I don't even check my count. I'm yes and You know, I didn't have any money growing up. I was on a plane five times. I think before the age of 18 I Vacation two to three weeks a year up until the age of 45.

54:05I used to take July 4th weekend and go to Europe because they didn't take or thanksgiving because they didn't take that holiday and I'm like, this is a chance to lap the competition by going to meet clients in London or Milan. Thanksgiving Thursday and Friday because America isn't working, but Europe still is. And now I'm catching up. So you know, you know, the lessons drive a Hyundai or don't drive a car and take your family to Africa. But and also I'm doing a lot of virtue cycling right now. I'm giving a lot of money away, not because I'm a good person, but because it makes me feel strong. I don't do it anonymously.

54:42I want recognition. I want, you know, I want to go to the donors party and have them call my name. I know that it just makes me feel makes me feel good. It makes me feel important. So experiences, giving money away. I hit my number. I'm trying, I'm thinking about how to write something or do something. I think everyone should have a number and then commit to like giving the rest or spending the rest. I think spending money is actually quite powerful because it's not only fun, but it puts money to the economy. You can spend it on your employees. It's a ton of fun and there's, I don't believe in a hoarding wealth.

55:14I think once you get to a number, people should have the right to be billionaires, but I don't understand why. Daniel Coniman, again, did this amazing research showing that above a certain level of wealth, it's diminishing returns. So I figured out what is enough money where I probably can do anything I want for the rest of my life and have a little bit of money for my kids in case they need a house or if things keep getting worse for young people, which they steadily have happened over the last 40 years. Above that, I'm either spending it or giving it away. There's just no, I don't see any reason why anyone would get any utility from being a billionaire, other than hoarding resources from other people that need a more.

55:54And they'll make all these excuses that they're more productive and they invest, and they do things. I just don't buy it. I just don't buy it. And I think you're gonna be happier. I don't think there's any, I don't, you know, there's some evidence that shows the kids of billionaires are a little bit fucked up. I don't know. So I'm, you know, I like the idea of getting to your number and then getting off the hedonic treadmill and saying, okay, from this point, I'm going to do amazing things or I'm going to give it away. But there's no real reason, there's no real reason to hoard wealth. We have, we have 20, you know, we have six people in America that are worth more than the bottom half.

56:30That doesn't make any sense. It just It's, Connemon shows that the difference between 40 ,000 year and 60 ,000 is enormous for someone's well -being and happiness. The difference between 10 million and 100 million year, there is no difference. There isn't. You're no happier. Now, there is a difference between a million and five million. I mean, you can do more things. But once you get to a certain level, so I'm trying to understand that because what I found is I have been, I've had such an absence of money in my whole life that when I finally got it. I had a difficult time not being focused on having more because the terrible thing about numbers is they're really easy to get your num.

57:08If you have X and wealth, you can easily imagine 2X and also you know someone that has 10X and you read about someone that has 100X. And you're going to go, okay, it's the best computer game in history. And if the scale, if that number has that number goes out, the more prestige relevance and random sexual encounters you have, you're like, well, okay, I'd like to three X those good things. You know what? On average, when you ask people, what do you think that you'd be satisfied with? Like, where do you want to bring your wealth into land? Like, what would you want to make every annually? Almost on average, pretty much everybody says, about three times one amount now.

57:46Someone says about three times, it doesn't matter if it's 50 grand or 50 mill, but you've run about three times, and that's where I'd come into land. And it keeps growing, right? Once again, it always keeps going up. that three times will and then you get to three and it's like, ah, yeah, it wasn't 150, it was 450. Uh, right. Talab's got this phenomenal quote where he says, the world is split into two groups, one who doesn't know how to start making money and one who doesn't know when to stop. Oh, I love that. I, and in the words of the great philosopher, Cheryl Crow, it's not getting what you want, it's wanting what you got.

58:16And so what I, what I tried to do was say, okay, I kept changing my number. If I'd had a million, but when I was 22, I thought, if I ever have a million bucks, I'm done. I'll keep working with Jesus Christ. I would feel good to have a million bucks in the bank. And then I'm like, okay, I'd have kids in the house and retire and make sure you have access to the best doctors. In case something goes wrong with only your kids or maybe a second on whatever, you need a lot more than a million. And then you're like, yeah, but I'd really like, you know, I don't want to be a kitchen owner in the mountains.

58:42I want to be a kitchen owner in the ass, and ask me. I mean, your number just keeps growing. And then you're like, and the real like, the real budget buster is a plane. But at some point, you know, and everyone gets to pick their own number, I don't believe we should rob and hood it. I do believe though that if you believe what Connemon said, I do believe we should probably have a much more progressive tax structure. I don't know. If you could, if you could tangibly change the life of people from 40 to 60 ,000 and someone's making 200 million a year, you know, what is that? That's 10 ,000 households that you could make much happier and you're not getting any happiness, that incremental 200 million.

59:22I really don't understand why we don't have tax rates of at least 50, maybe even up to 80%. I think that for most of the people that are in that high -running bracket, even anyone that's remotely smart, they have no idea where the fucking taxes go. They have no idea. They don't think, I think if you were able to draw a line between that person and this household in the suburbs of Chicago or Atlanta or wherever it is that this person, and the single mother, I think that that would give people an awful, greater sense of, wow, look at what I'm contributing to. Yeah, it's tactics. What does tactics feel like?

59:58Tactics feels like it gets frited away, and some congressman is gonna be able to get an additional fruit fucking bowl to be able to put out at some wanky meeting that's unnecessary. It's gonna be wasted by this incompetent behemoth that is the government. And, you know, I mean, look at the UK, the flash election that's just being called, the flash election that's just being called. You know, no one thinks, especially in the UK. I know the people of America have a big problem with taxes, except the obsession with freedom, which I'm slowly becoming infected by too. But the UK, let me tell you, if you're rich in America, you are so much better off, even in California than you would be if you were in the UK, because the UK will eat you alive when it comes to taxes.

1:00:44And yeah, I believe that. Yeah, speaking of which, side point, I've invited you know Dominic Cummings, do you remember him? Yeah, I've invited Dominic Cummings on the show. I want to bring him on to have a conversation ahead of this flash election because he's got some real gossip and tea that will be. You're such a brat. I know. No, nobody here. No one America. I barely know who that is. No, he's big time. He's big. I'm going to steal your idea. I love the idea of someone who pays a lot of taxes and they say, okay, I just think that's a genius idea. I'm actually going to steal it. And it says, you are paying for all the pre -K programs for the next three years in Evanston, Illinois.

1:01:28What turns tax into charity? Tons tax into philanthropy. What are you saying? Here are all the schools. Maybe even give them a choice. You're paying for the launch cable on the SS Ford carrier. And it comes with privileges. Do you want to go be the mystery reader at these pre -case schools, or do you want to spend the weekend on the SS forward? But I love the idea of connecting really big taxpayers to what they're actually doing. And maybe even giving them a bit of an option, it'll be a bit of a shell game because it's all going in the same place. But giving them, would you rather pay some of us, you know, want to beat our chest?

1:02:05I want a Tom Hock missile that's gonna be sent to this. Kill these fuckers, right? Some of us are angry. Fine. You know what you get to do? You get to show up, add an Air Force Base, and you get to sign your name on it. Get it selfie with it. You have breaking it. That's right. On the champagne over the nose of it and kill yourself. And other people like want to save the dolphins or whatever you want will put your name on or give you a sense for it and give you an option. So you can kind of stratify or have cohorts of where people's money goes. I mean, you know, what was it that you were saying before you like giving money away because it makes you feel good?

1:02:37Makes you feel good to give your money away. Well For the really rich people that is what taxes are supposed to be and what you know, you're framing around this is This rich person could pay for this many people at the bottom end or it could make life better for these people But there's just no lineage. There's no sense at all. I don't know where my fucking taxes go Well, and it becomes a game like I'm in huge and a tax avoidance. I feel like everyone, like a prisoner of war has an obligation to try and escape. I feel like every citizen has an obligation to pay as little tax as possible. And if you're wealthy and can afford really sophisticated tax advisors, you can avoid a lot of tax.

1:03:14And the tax cut is basically written for what I call super owners. There's a myth the US tax cut that the rich don't pay their taxes. is actually the rich super earners pay a disproportionate amount of the income to earners. So you're an entrepreneur, so you're able to write off a lot of your expenses, the tax code loves entrepreneurs. But that investment banker I was talking about, there's no hiding his salary. He makes 10 million a year. Boom. W2, top line growth income, living in Connecticut, 52%. Go fuck yourself. 5 .2 million right out of your check. You don't even see it boom. It's gone.

1:03:51If he manages to save the money though to be to buy real estate by stocks, he becomes an owner. A, a grows tax deferred. So think you're a stock. If he's a stock and he's making 10 million in growth or income a year, but every year it gets clip by 52 percent. Very hard to hit wealth. Whereas if you own stock, Apple Nvidia, Apple goes up 8 10 % a year, it grows tax deferred. And then when it gets tax, it gets taxed at a lower rate. And if you're really wealthy, when you're about to get taxed or you want the money, well, first off, you can probably borrow against it, put it into a trust and never, and then pass it on and step up basis, it goes up and never pay taxes on it, but say you want some of it, pretend you want to spend more time with your dad in Florida and move to Florida, and save 13 % of taxes, said Jeff Bezos.

1:04:41So there's all sorts of what we have done in America. us. We've said, if you win the gold and you become a super owner, we're going to give you the silver and the bronze. The myth is that rich people don't pay their taxes. The super owner, dad owns a carpractor clinic. Mom is a baller, partnered a law firm that make a million and a half bucks a year. In order to do that, they probably need to live in a major urban metro, usually in a blue state. They're paying 50 -52 % in taxes. And so the idea that the rich aren't paying enough, they're like, Are you fucking kidding me? But the top 25 taxpayers in the US, I'm sorry, the top 25 wealthiest taxpayers in the US, depending on which study you look at, maybe between 6 and 16 % tax rates.

1:05:22Corporate taxes at low, they've been since 1939, they used to account for 2 .5 % of GDP, now they're just 1%. So the people get most screwed or young people, there's a lot of taxes on them, the biggest tax cuts they don't get to engage in, mortgage, interest rate, and capital gains, and also the super earners. I was on the view today, which is weird. And of all the things that Wippy wanted to talk about, she came backstage and she was talking to me and she was like, angry at how many taxes she's paying. I'm like, are you a closeted Republican? And she's like, I make a really good living here and I give half of it to the government and now they wanna charge me surge pricing when I drive my car into the city.

1:05:59She was irate about surge pricing. And I thought, it's, you know, wealthy, powerful people, like whoopee, she has an influence. Whenever she hears the argument that Rich aren't paying their taxes, she's like, you're fucking crazy. And here's the thing, it's a nuanced argument. It's the super owners that don't pay their fair share and corporations. The super earners and the young get really screwed. Scott Galloway, ladies and gentlemen, Scott, I appreciate the hell out of you. It's so good to see everyone at the moment. I do feel like you're kind of following me around the internet, which is nice and good.

1:06:31To resist. Judo, I'm like AOL in the 90s. Stick your hand in a cereal box, and I'm gonna pop out. I appreciate you made new book. Out now everyone should go and pick that up. Where else should they go to follow you on the internet? Like I said boss, I'm everywhere. PropG pod, pivot with Cara Swisher, my newsletter, no mercy, no malice. But like I said, I'll find you. Got time it. What an apocalyptic end. I appreciate you. Thank you. Alright brother, thanks Chris. Congratulations on all your success. And Doug, here we have the Lemo Emu in its natural habitat helping people customize their core insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual.

1:07:13Fascinating. It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug. Uh, Lemo, is that guy with the binoculars watching us? Cut the camera. They see us. Only pay for what you need at Liberty Mutual .com. Liberty Liberty Liberty Liberty Liberty Liberty Savings very underwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company and affiliates excludes Massachusetts.