September 2025 Q&A - Work-Life Balance, Working in the White House & Biggest Regrets

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1:30Hello, I'm Anthony Scaramucci, and this is Open Book, where I talk to some of the brightest minds about everything surrounding the written word. That's everything. That's from authors and historians to figures in entertainment, political activists, and of course, Wall Street. Before we dive in, make sure to follow or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget to leave a review. Good or bad, I want to hear from you. I want to hear whether you're enjoying it or where we can improve. and I can take the hits. So let me know. If you don't like something, say it straight. Now let's get into it.

2:14Hey everybody, welcome back to Open Book. I am your host, Anthony Scaramucci. I just want to say thank you to everybody for your comments on places like YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, X, etc. Loving the feedback, loving the questions. And I love all the commentary, good, bad, and the ugly. So if you don't like us, say that. But if you do like us, maybe say that three times. But in any event, I'm going to go through these questions today. These are the questions for August. And so if I don't answer your question, keep an eye out on my posts in the future. I'm trying to try to get to everybody. And as always, thank you for tuning in and engaging with the show.

2:47It means a lot to all of us here at Team Open Book. And so let's get started. This is from YouTube at Galway Bound. You have a lot of stamina. What's your typical daily routine? how do you get all of that reading in and how do you stay fit and healthy? So, you know, you can never be fit enough or healthy enough. Remember what Wallace Simpson once said, you could never be too rich or too thin. But I sort of feel like I'm missing a beat once in a while when I'm traveling. I'm a little bit of a junk food eater. So I've got to watch that. You get very bad habits that you develop in the 1970s, like eating Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and Baby Ruth bars.

3:20When I'm stressed, I go to those things. So not perfect. Don't want anybody to think that. But here are a couple of things that I do that may help you get into a routine. Got to work out. Got to work out 30 to 60 minutes a day if you could do that. It doesn't have to be every day, but if you set your goals on every day, you'll get five or six workouts in. I've yet to meet a super depressed person that is lifting weights in a gym. You find that person. I'd like to hear from that person. But I typically feel if you're in the gym working, you can stay pretty much upbeat. And so build that habit. And getting the reading in is also a habit.

3:54So some of the things that I do is I read for an hour a day in the morning, no matter what. So if I'm up in the morning, pull out a book, I pull out my iPad, I pull out something to get me started reading. And I'm listening to books throughout the day. So yesterday, as an example, I flew to Miami to meet the legendary Gary Brecka. And so on the plane, I had my earbuds in and I listened to three hours of a book called The King of Kings. I was really talking about the fall of the Shah of Iran in the late 1970s. It's a piece of history I didn't fully understand. So you can do this, but you got to fit it in.

4:26You got to be wanting to do it. And so those are my quick lessons there for Galloway Bound. Let's go to LinkedIn. This is Patrick Pan at Patrick Pan. Your recent explorations with Galloway have been fascinating. What are your thoughts on the role that policy or even the role that private sector influence can play in shaping the development of young men in a time when many young men in America seem utterly lost? So Patrick, this is the reason why Scott and I put that Lost Boys limited series podcast together, there'll be some other things that we're working on. I'm putting some course material together for people, sort of the things that you don't learn in a business school or things you don't learn in college, to think about the world and to adjust yourself mentally.

5:07I think it's our mental mindset ultimately that guides us. If we can force our worldview to be better, then the world around us gets better. And that's even and in bad times. And so I really believe part of this crisis, Patrick, is expectation management. Of course, growing up in the 1970s with no money, I had very low expectations. So things that have happened to me, I have been grateful for. Now, having said that, you could also be in a position where you're me and saying, well, geez, I'm not worth$100 billion. Let me go cry in my soup, which of course you and I both know would be ridiculous.

5:40So a couple of things you need to think about for our younger people, expectation management, accountability. I find people are way happier when they're accountable for their mistakes and they're not trying to disclaim blame. Sort of a sense of ownership of the trials and tribulations of life, I think fortify people, make them feel more secure and more confident about the future. It's a hard thing to sometimes do, but we've got to get our younger people to start thinking like that. And I think if we do that, you'll see a massive sea change. One other point, as you mentioned public policy, I just want to weave that in there.

6:12I do think we're going to need some civic responsibilities for our younger people. I don't know if it's a national service thing. I'm not exactly sure what or how it should be, but I will tell you right now, we've got to get people together. We did that in the Second World War. We did that, believe it or not, in even the Vietnam or the Iraqi War. I'm not saying we need to go to war, but we probably need some level of public service. Okay, let's keep going. Instagram, Sue Bullis, what's the first book you loved and why? Wow, It's such a great question. The first book I really loved was probably Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

6:46How about that? Roald Dahl writing about Charlie and the very, very famous Willy Wonka and all the eccentricities of Willy Wonka and the excitement of entering that chocolate factory. And of course, in a weird way, it's a British dream story, if you will. Like the American dream, the kid starts out poor and here he is. He's going to end up inheriting the most famous chocolate factory in the world. So it's a very exciting book for me as a young person. Really, really enjoyed it. And I would recommend that to younger people. Sort of the book of books for me, in addition to the Bible, of course, would always be the Iliad.

7:21I always steer people towards the Iliad. There's new translations of the Iliad out right now and new translations of the Odyssey. And they're contemporized. And I think these are brilliant stories about the human condition. And so those are books I always recommend to people. But Charlie and Charles of the Factory was number one. Ex-Paul. So this is from formerly known as Twitter, and this is Paul. If you could combine two former U.S. presidents to make one, which would you combine and why? Such a great question. And for me, it's always going to be FDR and Abraham Lincoln, both born under the sign of Aquarius, February 12th, 1809 for Lincoln.

7:54January 30th, 1882. So they're both born in the 19th century, FDR. These men have brilliant insight, brilliant temperaments. But above all, they have a real love of people and they're making decisions based on doing the right thing for people that they'll never possibly even meet. Just think about that. Think about the virtue and the principles of that. And so those two guys I would love to see combined. What a great question, Paul. Thank you. YouTube, Motown Guitar Joe. I don't know. I'm like picturing you, Motown Guitar Joe, and it's a great visual. But why am I so pro crypto? I respect you, but I've never heard one good argument from anybody in support of crypto.

8:32Joe, maybe you'll be the first, but I'm skeptical. So Joe, you should be skeptical. And so listen, it took me eight years to make my first cryptocurrency investment. I was introduced to Bitcoin way back in 2012. Didn't understand it. Was very skeptical, very cynical of it. It visited upon me three more times. At the third time, I said, you know what? I got to really try to do some homework on this. So I want you to stay skeptical. I think one of the number one things as an investor, number one rule, actually, there's two rules. Number one rule, don't lose money. Number two rule, revert always back to the number one rule.

9:07So I want you to stay skeptical. I just see this as a major technological breakthrough for all of us to really understand the blockchain or understand the digital property aspects of Bitcoin. If you can get your arms around it, I usually find people, nine out of 10 people, end up going towards Bitcoin if they do the homework. And so I would just recommend that you do the homework, but please, by all means, continue to stay skeptical. But for me, I own it. I recommend it to people, but I also understand the volatility related to it. Okay, LinkedIn, Matthew Sutton, you've experienced massive wins and very public setbacks.

9:45When you're hit with failure in business or life, what's your process for bouncing back quickly and regaining credibility? So Matthew, let me give you the bad news first. So Matthew, the bad news is there's no such thing as quickly. When you're getting your ass kicked, it's a violent downturn, but it can take in some cases many years to build back up. And so I'll just point out when I got blown out of the White House, terrible. It took maybe two or three years to regain my footing professionally, regain my footing in the media. And I think what ends up happening is you can't give up. And so I would just tell you, if you're having a setback, and hopefully your setbacks won't be as public as my setback, but if you're having one, don't give up.

10:23Dial into your personality, the grit in your personality. I have a lot of friends of mine that have been blown to pieces in various situations. I could name anchors that have been fired, people that have been fired from large jobs and businesses, people humiliated in politics. I suffered my humiliation in politics. I've also been fired from companies early parts of my career. And I think that the resonating message is to just go forward. I think that's the only thing that we can do is just go forward. If you're a true self, over time, you're willing to express that to other people. People will see that.

10:57And that's when your credibility starts to get regained. Great question. Okay. This is from Instagram, at Brandon Tyler Lee. What do you look for when hiring talent at Salt or Skybridge? So attitude. I think the number one thing is attitude. We hire so many young people that come into the firm inexperienced, maybe don't understand the business of money management, the conference business, how to curate a conference, how to put programs like this together from a production point of view. But attitude, people are willing to learn and people are coachable and people are hungry. Those are the ingredients that we're always looking for.

11:31Remember, you got to play on a team. The great irony about life and even the great irony about capitalism, there's a collectivity to life and capitalism. And so you need a team. You need a team to win a European football championship. You need a team to win an American baseball world series. And certainly in business, you need a team. You can't do everything. And so you got to have people on your team that are selfless and willing to do the things that you can't do. Remember, you can do anything, but you can't do everything. Don't forget that. And those are the types of people we're trying to hire.

12:02Okay, this is from X. This is Chris V. What's your typical weekday weekend look like and how do you manage everything? So on the weekends, I'm up early, believe it or not. I feel like you got to get into a schedule. I'll be up early no matter what. So I'm up early. I'm in the gym first thing in the morning on a Saturday and Sunday. And then I go get myself some coffee. I'm a big reader. So I've got the papers handy. Maybe I'll go to the store and buy some papers and an egg sandwich. I sit down and do some reading. I'm in the process right now of writing a book. And so I'll probably spend an hour or two on the weekends reading and proofing a manuscript that we're constructing right now and then make time for the family.

12:39I think that's ultimately it. I'd like to tell you I have some like super structured thing, but I don't. I tell people when you think about your schedule, think about it in compartments. Don't overwhelm yourself. You're never going to do as much as you'd like to do in a day, but you can do a little bit each day. I gave this analogy somewhere a few days ago. I'll share it with you. picture your time as a glass jar. And let's say you've got sand and rocks. Well, the sand is sort of the things you need to do, but they're not super consequential. And the rocks, the sort of the little tiny boulders are the things that are really big and important to you.

13:14So how are you going to put them into this vessel of your time? Well, if you put the sand in first, guess what happens? You can't fit in the rocks, right? So you got to put the rocks in first and then put the sand over the rocks where the sand sort of fills in the spaces in between the rocks. And so This is a metaphor of the way you think about your time. Block off things in your schedule for those little tiny boulders and then work around the tiny things that you need to do. But get the boulder things done first, if that makes any sense. YouTube, Takran89. I mean, I just do love these nicknames.

13:46I mean, I'm just like, you know, at Mooch or at Scaramucci. I feel it's too boring. Okay, Takran89. If a Democratic president wins the 2028 election, would you be open to a cabinet position, but other position in the administration in an effort to bring the country together and push back on the polarized nature of our politics. So it's a great question. I'm not really great at politics. I think one of the problems is when you're a politician, you got to lie a lot. And I think that one of the reasons why it would be very hard for me to be a politician, because I really don't feel like lying to people.

14:15I also got five kids and I don't want them to have a dad that's a bullshit artist and a liar. So politicians, unfortunately, have to lie. I don't have yet to meet a politician that isn't a liar, unfortunately. probably all mad at me for saying that, but that's just brutally true. I guess in cabinet positions, you can be a little bit more honest, but look at these Trump situations, man, where these guys are in like men and women are in massive ass kissing mode of Donald Trump. I mean, it's sort of revolting. So I don't know. I guess the short answer would be, it would depend on the person who got the job and it would depend on what they would want me to do.

14:47I do enjoy public service and I do want to help people. So I'd be open to it, but I'll tell you, it would have to go through a very thick screening process. Okay. LinkedIn, Ella Outh, hopefully I'm pronouncing this right. Ella Outh or Ellie Outh. Ellie Outh Lopez, what is your view on work-life balance? There's no such thing. Okay. There's no such thing as work-life balance and there's no such thing as a relationship balance. So hear me out for a second. Somebody says to me, well, you're in a relationship. Relationships are 50-50. That's nonsense. Some days you're coming in with 90 and your spouse is coming in with 10.

15:20Maybe they have an illness or maybe they had a setback in the family or something's going on. And other times they're coming in with 90, you're coming in with 10. It's never even. So don't pretend otherwise. You have to be fluid in relationships. And I see you have to be fluid in your work-life balance. If you looked at me in my 20s, you'd be like, this guy is out of whack. He has absolutely no balance. And I was all work all the time. And the truth of the matter is I needed to do that to get my career started. As my career started to mature and I got a little bit older, I was able to flex more and be more flexible with a work-life balance.

15:52But don't be overly concerned with a work-life balance or a relationship balance. Truth be told, it's never perfect and you'll never get it right 100%. And I am a little bit of a workaholic, so probably not the best person to be answering that question, I should say. Okay, let's keep going. Jim Venturi, Instagram. What are you most proud of changing your mind about and how did you get there? Well, I say business crypto. It was very negative on crypto. Didn't really understand it. I'm a traditional finance person. What the hell is this? But I think I'm proud of changing my mind, seeing the opportunity and being what I call neurally plastic, where you can adapt yourself, have a fixed point of view, not be too prideful, be humble enough to know that you could get something wrong.

16:33I guess politically, I would say Donald Trump. I saw some of the virtues of Trump in terms of trying to help lower middle income people. But I think the overarching weaknesses are related to some of the cruelty, which I don't like. And so I'm proud of myself for being able to speak out against that. I've changed my mind about different things as you get old. Churchill once said, if you are not a Democrat or a liberal below the age of 40, you have no heart. But if you're not a conservative after the age of 40, you have no brain. And so there's a little bit of facetiousness in that remark, but you're going to change during your life.

17:06You're going to adapt as you get more life experience. I can tell you this, my life experience is maybe more humble and more psychologically minded and perhaps more empathetic towards others. And I hope that happens to you. And I hope those changes are good for you and positive. All right, let's keep going. X, this is from X, Beat King. All right. What is the latest book you are reading? How much time do you spend reading books a week? So it's three hours a day. Three times seven is 21 hours a week. That's more or less my average. Remember, I'm on planes, driving in the car, listening to books on tape or podcasts, but I'm just talking about books.

17:41It's probably 21 hours. I'm just pulling up some books right here that I'm reading contemporaneously right now. So one I mentioned earlier in this Q &A, it's called The King of Kings by Scott Anderson. It's an absolutely phenomenal book. I've read The Nazi Mind recently by Lawrence Ries, 12 Warnings from History. I thought that was a phenomenal book, just about how people can get sucked into things that are quite evil. There's a book I just cracked open. This book was from 2019. It's called Chaos, and it's written by Tom O 'Neill. Tom is an unbelievable writer. He's writing about Charles Manson, and he's writing about the CIA and the secret history of the 1960s.

18:21Of course, I was born in 1964, and I don't really remember the 60s other than being four or five in the age of kindergarten. This was an amazing time in US history, lots of tumult and tumultuousness. A lot of things that are going on today A happened in the 1960s. So those are a few books that I'm reading right now that I would be recommending to you guys. Okay, let's go to YouTube. Cody, C8952. All right, I'd love to know, Cody, what the 89 and the 52 are all about. But if you yourself could add a handful of people to lead the country with no questions and asks, who would those people be and why?

18:56It's a very, very interesting question. Listen to me. I would want historians in the mix. I'd want people in the mix like Jamie Dimond. I would want some industrialists in the mix. It would be a collection of people, frankly. I don't think we get our best people in politics because politics is very brutal. The politicians have figured out that negative campaigning and maligning the other candidate works. I always say this facetiously, but I think you get the point. Have you ever met a smart politician? Of course, we have a lot of smart politicians, but we beat on them and they beat on each other so badly that we have all these negative opinions of them.

19:35But for me, I would want to take some people from the corporate sector, but I would also want to do something that Mike Bloomberg did, get some small business leaders in there and get some union leaders and people that you wouldn't normally put in the mix, but people that are part of the American public that should have a voice in terms of what's going on with American policy. So one of the smartest guys that I've met, who I think would do a great job as president, but will never run for president for so many different reasons is Jamie Dimon. I just think he's brilliant on a lot of different things, and he's also a smart, caring guy.

20:09But those are the types of people I would want. Remember, in the US now, these are popularity contests. They're not hiring processes anymore. American people don't sit around like a board of directors trying to hire a CEO, try to pick somebody that's going to entertain them or keep things interesting for the next four years. I'm not sure if that's the best way to do this, but that's where we are now. So we're going to need somebody that can capture the people's imagination, but also have some understanding of history and policy. Okay, let's keep going. LinkedIn, St. Bruce McGuire, what are your views on the federal budget cuts to US research universities and the potential for those cuts to impair America's ability to innovate and lead?

20:45I mean, it's horrific. So we know that two things that the American government does reasonably well that has really boosted American productivity and boosted our culture, boosted our standing around the world, is infrastructure and research and development. And so the U.S. government putting the money into the universities and getting a real bang for its buck in terms of innovation, drug therapy discoveries, ideas around industrial production, all different types of things that we've done over the last hundred or so years have been magnificent for the United States. And so cutting that stuff back, it's a demultiplication effect on the society.

21:22Very, very bad. I wish it wasn't happening. There's other things that we could do to manage the budget. This is the worst thing that we could do. It has a demultiplication effect on our intellectual capital and our growth and our innovation. So yeah, I hate it, by the way. So anyway, hopefully I made that clear. Instagram, feelings overrated, but you've got overrated there as a zero. So I guess feelings are overrated. I don't know. I want to be true to your feelings and mine. But if you want to switch careers or passions midlife, what advice would you give? How about do it? That's the advice. Don't overthink shit.

21:55Okay. You're going to be dead before you know it. If you want to do something different, go ahead and do it. I believe that life is a journey. Life is an adventure. I've done so many different things that I never thought I would be doing, but I always look at it and say, you know, F that, let's just do it. Okay. So that's my advice for feelings overrated. Trust your feelings, feelings overrated. Okay. X at Lucky Luciano. All right. I mean, I love these names. Looking back on your remarkable journey, can you pinpoint a specific light-defining moment or pivotal event that significantly authored the course of your life path, either in your career or other aspects of life?

22:27I definitely can, and I can tell you exactly what it was, Lucky Luciano. It was April of 1982. So there I was as an 18-year-old. I want you to picture this. My hair was blown back like Tony Manero in Saturday Night Fever. I knew every dance move back in the 80s and 70s. And I was driving around in my Camaro, which I purchased from a Sunoco dealer, like a Sunoco gas station. It was a 1979 Berlinetta Camaro. It was a burgundy car with a burgundy interior. I mean, you can't make this shit up. It had cigarette burns in there. I didn't care. I wanted to have that car. It was a hot car at that time.

23:03And I was somewhat wayward. And I guess the SAT word I would use is desultory. I was all over the place, not doing anything, meaningful. And when I got into Tufts University and my parents thought it was spelled T-O-U-G-H-S, my father handed me a check and it was a$10 ,000 check. I think I've talked about this before, but my dad had cashed in his union life insurance policy and said, we don't really have the money to send you to this school. Your guidance counselor is telling me that you should go to this school. Here's a check. I'll get you started. You're going to have to work and you have to take on some school loans.