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let's be honest it's the boring that makes you rich and the most unbelievable way for generating wealth and long-term
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Economic Security is and then once you do that you can become a super tax
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avoider that sounded awful Scott Galloway one of the world's leading
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voices in business and finance is back his mission is to help millions of people build incredible wealth and live
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a life of Economic Security if you're trying to build wealth you want to lean into your advantages your advantages in your 20s our flexibility and time so
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take risks find your talent not your passion that has a 90 plus% employment rate or become an owner not an earner
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and develop an army of capital that goes out and kills for you at night and then invest it what if you're not young focus
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on the things you can control one thing that is within your control is spending but 98% of us will spend everything we
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get our hands on it is very hard to have the discipline to take money that is within your grasp and invest it and we
00:00:56
don't appreciate the power of investing in compound interest my team brought a bucket of sand to illuminate the power
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of compounding interest this is investing 1,000 a month over the course of 12 months starting at the age of 25
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if you left it and kept investing at that rate by the age of 65 it would look like this and the young man is says I have
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500 lb I'm going to wait till I have a million before I start investing the way you get a million pounds is by investing that 500 and there notion that it's too
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late for me I'm in my 40s I'm going to ignore finances oh bull so what is the set of steps let me make it easy first
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thing congratulations Dio gang we've made some progress 63% of you that listen to this
00:01:36
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00:01:45
liked any of the videos we've posted if you like this channel can you do me a quick favor and hit the Subscribe button it helps this channel more than you know
00:01:51
and the bigger the channel gets as you've seen the bigger the guests get thank you and enjoy this episode
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Scott you've written a book on wealth money
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Finance why and why does it why does it matter uh this is kind of a memo to my
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25-year-old self I've been Rich three times and the first two times I lost it and I didn't
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grow up with a lot of money it's been very important to me I think America and mostly in Europe but especially America
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America becomes more like itself every day and that is it's a generous loving place if you have money it's a rapacious
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violent place if you don't I think Economic Security is really important and I think there's a series of habits
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and character traits that uh can help you get to Economic Security you know that study that you become the average
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of your five closest friends same body mass index same politics same sports team same
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neighborhood uh what they don't talk about is that amongst those five people even if they're all making about the
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same amount of money one will end up much more economically well off than the other four and I'm trying to understand
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the behaviors of that one person who becomes economically secure by the time they're my age without making a lot more
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money than their colleagues do you think we're taught about money where did where did those
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people that one in five where did where did they learn about money yeah that's a really interesting question I think so
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the honest answer is I don't know what I would say uh sociologically is that rich people talk about money and it's
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considered taboo for employees and middle class and lower class and women to talk about money like you're told not
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to talk about your salary at work asymmetry of information will always benefit the person that has symmetry
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that knows the information the boss of a company knows what everyone's making but he tells his or her employees not to
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discuss their salary because Lisa might found out that Bob is making 30% more for doing the same work so there's a bit
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of a zeit guy that tells people not to talk about money that it's like talking about porn or that it's vulgar and I
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think you need to start talking about money and maintain a certain level of financial literacy from a very early age
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because Roger Federer talks about tennis if you want to be good at anything most people want to be good at money and to
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be good at something you need to understand it and to understand it you need to talk about it so I'm very transparent with how much money I make
00:04:22
what I do with it but talk to your friends about mortgage rates talk to your friends about how much money they make what they're doing with it where
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they lost money and and people aren't transparent about it especially I think about men we're supposed to be just like
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accidentally wealthy and to ever talk about our financial problems is to admit that we're not Ballers or that we're not
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masculine and so I encourage people from a young age to start talking about money and understand it and be transparent
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about it where did you learn about money because I think about my own life and I think there's key moments of quite
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frankly luck yeah where I was exposed to information because I was invited into a
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room physically literally into a room or I was through no decision of my own
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someone came into my life yeah um or in my case maybe one of the biggest blessings I ever had is when I went off
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dropped out of University and pursued entrepreneurship my brother decided to go be an investment banker for 11 years in London Y and then when I had my first
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exit he messaged me one day and said hey I'll manage your money and I'll quit my job and come work with you full-time and
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that's my older brother so like life gave me the greatest gift anyone could ever have been
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given that that that rings so true so I think of three things as you said that the first is the smartest thing I ever
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did was being born a white heterosexual male in California in the 60s because it gave me unfair Advantage it gave me
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access to free education the University of California and access 76% admissions rate when I applied UCLA the admissions
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rate this year is 9% I came a professional age in the 90s when the internet was coming online so I sort of
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had these winds in my back and also so just to be blunt everyone that was
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raised in capital looked smelled and felt like me they were all white heterosexual males and I didn't even
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realize at the time what privilege or unfair Advantage I had so the first is just just sheer luck the second is
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environmental I grew I was raised by a single immigrant mother who lived in die of secretary and people who don't grow
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up with money people who grow up with money just can't really truly empathize with what it's like to grow up without
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money I felt as if there was this ghost following me and my mom around constantly whispering in our ear you're
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not worthy your mom [ __ ] up which means you you aren't worthy and so I
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very early decided that I was that Economic Security was really important to me I want to be clear you can't make
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a decision to be wealthy a lot of it is luck but I was going to be very committed my goal in life from 0 to 45
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wasn't to be a good person it wasn't to save the whales it wasn't to to have strong relationships it was to get
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economic security so I started connecting the dots around money pretty early and then along the lines of what
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you were talking about um my mom had a boyfriend and um
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and people don't talk about this you know how in certain dramas they reference a second family where a guy
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has an entirely other family despite the fact he's married my mom and I were that second family her boyfriend for seven
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years was a wonderful man named Terry really nice to me spent every other weekend with us super generous to me uh
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he was also married with another family so we were that second family but he was a good man and he was he was actually a
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good role model for me and one weekend I was asking him what is a stock and I was
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13 and he said here's $200 he gave me two crisp $0000 bills and said walk down to one of those stock brokerages those
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fancy stock brokerages in Westwood Village and buy some stock and if you don't buy it by Monday afternoon or by
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the time I'm back next weekend I'm taking my money back so at 13 I marched down to Marl Lynch Pierce Fenner Smith
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was in the lobby I was ignored I got intimidated I walked across the street to Dean Witter Reynolds another brokerage and this young guy named siero
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came walking out and said hi I'm cero and he gave me my first lesson in the markets and I bought 14 shares of
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Columbia Pictures I 13 He gave you a lesson in the market yeah at 13 and
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every day every weekday for the next three years from Emerson Junior High pay phone booth I'd put two dimes in and
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call saigh and he would say Close Encounters of the Third is a hit which
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means the Columbia uh Studios is going to make a lot of money so people are buying more stock and then I'd go into
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his office I didn't I have a ton of friends and so I would just swing by Dean Witter and he would always give me
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a lesson in the markets had those two men not shown such
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generosity to you with that time and with that $200 bill have you ever played out in your mind where you might be I
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think we all do that like sliding doors that movie you know things are it's like life is such a ser series of you know I
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I promised myself I was going to approach this strange woman at the Raleigh Hotel in the middle of the day who was sitting by the pool who was
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sitting there with another woman and another guy and without the benefit of alcohol it's not easy to open you know a
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conversation with a strange woman and I walked out to get my car and I said I promised myself I was going to speak to
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her I was very drawn to a beautiful woman so I went back in I just rolled right up and I said hi I'm Scott where are you guys from and this was at the
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Raleigh Hotel long story short 18 months later our first son's middle name is Raleigh right right and what I tell
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people is that unless you're willing to take an uncomfortable risk nothing wonderful is ever going to happen to you
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I mean a really uncomfortable risk what you're doing here is an uncomfortable risk it's public failure if it doesn't work this podcast platform you're
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starting you know this most people aren't willing to take these risks and a lot of this not to get existential a lot
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of this comes down to a huge unlock for me as been atheism I think I have a very solid grasp of the finite nature of life
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you're a young man you're going to be my age in an instant and the thing you're going to recognize is that
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okay in 30 or 40 years everyone whose opinion you are worried about is going to be dead and I have found that has
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been an enormous unlock for me knowing that I'm going to some point sooner than I'd like look into my kids eyes and know
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our relationship is coming to an end so I'm comfortable expressing my emotions are more comfortable I'm comfortable
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taking uncomfortable risks knowing that if I call someone and ask them to invest if I approach a strange woman in a bar
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and introduce myself if I call an employee who I would never think would consider working for me I'm not afraid
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of rejection because I realized everyone I'm worried about being shamed by is going to be dead soon and so am I and so
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why wouldn't you live out life why wouldn't you live out loud why wouldn't you squeeze so much juice from this you
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know uh lemon called life it's really been an enormous unlock for me because the Reality Steve is that most people
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are not willing to take uncomfortable risks that might result in public shaming it's embarrassing to get
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rejected by a PO to express interest in someone and be sort of rejected it's
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embarrassing to try and raise money and be rejected it's embarrassing to start a business and not have it work the
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majority of people aren't willing to take those uncomfortable risks and the reason why you get outsized return is an
00:11:15
entrepreneur the reason why you get outsize returns when you're willing to approach strangers and ask your
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mentorship friendship Express romantic interest is because you are willing to endure rejection the most
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overcompensated people in any organization of the sales people in terms of how hard
00:11:32
and how smart they are how hard they work and how smart they are relative to their compensation hands down the most
00:11:37
overcompensated people that everyone resents are the salespeople because they are willing to get out a big spoon and
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eat [ __ ] do not call me again okay so what you're saying is I should follow up in a
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couple weeks right that type of rejection that type of risk that type of
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public failure 99% of people are not willing to endure I ran for sophomore
00:12:00
Junior and senior class president in high school I lost all three times and based on my track record I decided I
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should run for student body president where I went out went on to wait for it lose and it never really got in the way
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of my confidence you know and that's the key if you want and unfortunately young
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men are told you know don't try hard or they feel like a loss of agency or
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especially romantically they're told be careful in terms of expressing romantic interest and if you don't know the difference between expressing interest
00:12:32
in asking someone out for coffee and harassing them you've got bigger problems but I think a lot of young men
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feel like their agency has been taken away they feel like the game is rigged so they're not trying and quite frankly
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they're spending much too too much time on a screen or in their home so they're not putting themselves in a position to
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have something wonderful happen to them and on a very basic level I'm almost
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entirely sure that I can guarantee you that nothing really want wonderful I
00:13:00
mean really wonderful is going to happen to you inside of your home on a screen
00:13:05
your success is a function of your ability to endure rejection and increasingly how much time you spend
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outside of your house off a screen what if you're not young because what you described there that all of that was me
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18 I had just dropped out of University after going to only one of the lectures
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and I had these four credit cards which had about I think combined about £1,000 on them maxed them all out my parents
00:13:31
went speaking to me I'm 3 Hour 3 hours away from home roughly up in Manchester more than that 6our round
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trip in Manchester and I'm 18 I've have got no kids no mortgage no nothing and I'm in this room that I can afford to
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pay for so in I was so clearly at the bottom with nothing to lose that every roll of the dice was a potential win so
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I was rolling that [ __ ] but you kept rolling them over and over and over and over again but but I I I wonder
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sometimes CU there's probably going to be someone listening that's you know 47 three kids mortgage comfortable job just
00:14:02
about cutting it every month one holiday a year experiencing the same
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dissatisfaction with their life but they can't roll like I could when I was 18 look the reality is when you have kids
00:14:13
Everything Changes the I think the probably the darkest Moment For Me Maybe personally or professionally other than
00:14:18
losing my mom was the moment that was supposed to be the happiest and that was when my first son was born and you think
00:14:25
that when this child when you you know this child's introduced to the world it's going to be bright lights and angels singing for me if I felt
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humiliation and shame and fear because I had made a lot of money but I had gone
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Allin and this is a lesson from the book The Power of diversification I'd gone Allin on this one company Red Envelope
00:14:43
which went public in 2002 as an e-commerce company I started and I thought and had been taught by The Venture Capital Community that if you
00:14:50
throw yourself at something and your talented and I thought I'm a baller I'm really good at what I do you got to go
00:14:55
all in and I kept investing every spare dollar I had and threw myself at this thing and then a strike at the port a
00:15:03
software glitch and the credit crisis in 2008 our stock went from seven bucks to
00:15:08
chapter 11 in like three weeks and I ended up not being worth 10 or 12 million but being worth worth negative2
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million because I was one of those idiots that borrowed against their stock to buy more stock ah and then my child
00:15:21
has the poor judgment my oldest to come marching out of my girlfriend and the first thing I felt was failure on a
00:15:27
massive level like my first emotion when my son was born was I have failed to
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live up to my core responsibility as a man and that is to take care of my child
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and it was just it was just a really ugly emotion and that's a lesson in the book and that is the moment you
00:15:43
aggregate anything resembling some sort of uh decent amount of capital you want
00:15:49
to look at it and you want to diversify like crazy because if I had just taken a little bit of money off the table and
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invested in index funds or in real estate or bonds I would have been so much better off but
00:16:02
everyone's told you can have it all you can you you know you can be successful if you just
00:16:08
go all in never give up well actually the market Will trump individual
00:16:13
performance every time and last week my the investment I was most excited about
00:16:19
this healthc Care Tech startup great CEO tier one investors elbowed my way into
00:16:24
the deal I put five million bucks in I found out last Friday it's a zero it
00:16:30
just didn't work zero shutting down but here's the thing I never invest more than 3% of my net worth now in any
00:16:37
one thing so while it hurts I have kevlar in the form of diversification so I took a bullet to the chest knocked me
00:16:44
out my feet I get up I was bummed out for an hour that was it because I never go all in on something and people are
00:16:51
taught especially young people especially men who are more risk aggressive go all in on something because the people who are the
00:16:56
wealthiest people in the world kind of went all in on something and what they don't tell you is the moment they have Capital they start diversifying like
00:17:03
crazy so you want to diversify you don't need to find the needle and the Hast
00:17:09
stack you can buy the whole Hast stack and especially unfortunately in the American economy not as much in the UK
00:17:14
economy it continues to be up and to the right and the S&P and the NASDAQ are sort of self filtering mechanisms
00:17:21
because they kick out companies that aren't great and they bring in new ones they kick out Kodak and they bring in Salesforce if I had learned that divers
00:17:29
ation when I was a younger man I would have saved myself Not only would I be have saved myself a lot of economic harm
00:17:35
I would have saved myself a lot of mental anguish so diversification and that's one of the key components of my
00:17:42
algebra of wealth diversification people don't recognize how powerful it is because it sounds boring and you have
00:17:49
people like Bill Amman saying it's not concentration it's conviction you know
00:17:54
and then they beat on their chest like check out my [ __ ] no divers ify and get
00:18:00
rich slowly because here's the thing life goes so goddamn fast W life has gone slowly said no one ever now back to
00:18:08
your person who's 40 45 they're going to live another 40 years they're probably
00:18:13
going to work another 30 you want to lean into your advantages your advantages in your 20s are flexibility
00:18:19
you want to Workshop careers find some find your talent not your passion start saving a little bit of money a little
00:18:24
bit of money when you're young is a lot when you're older trying to develop that savings muscle 100 bucks a month 1,000
00:18:30
bucks a month oh my God 2500 bucks a month if you can do that in your 20s you're going to be fine when you're my
00:18:36
age even if you don't go double platinum or sell a book or be a baller in business you're fine your plan b is all
00:18:42
set that's your advantage when you're in your 20s is time when you get to your 40 is your advantage is the following one
00:18:48
hopefully you're in a relationship with a partner you can align with around
00:18:53
Financial um objectives your approach to spending your approach to earning you can see the Runway All right I'm going
00:19:00
to retire in 30 years I need 15 to 25
00:19:05
times my my nut to be in the bank to retire I spend about
00:19:11
$120,000 a year that 20 times that I would need 2.4 million I'm not now work
00:19:17
backwards how much would I need to save over the next 30 years to get to 2.4 million assuming 8% a year The Landing
00:19:23
lights are on you can start to plan your life I'm not going to get there I can't save this much I got kids in college
00:19:29
okay when do your kids go to college can you take that burn down to 80 grand by moving to Mexico City or Costa Rica or
00:19:35
to St Louis but you have the advantage of knowing your path ideally you have a
00:19:41
career where you can make some money and start saving a little bit ideally you have a partner where you can get
00:19:47
alignment around working together to get that Financial Security but most people
00:19:52
in their 40s are under the impression their life is over I mean they're probably going to live to be over a 100
00:20:00
and so okay so you don't have 80 years you only have 60 years left but you still probably got another 30 years
00:20:06
working and making money and you kind of know what you need right uh so I think
00:20:11
there's advantages at every age but this notion that it's too late for me I'm in my 40s I'm going to ignore finances a
00:20:17
[ __ ] you just need to have an adult conversation with yourself do you think it makes sense then to go kind of risk
00:20:23
on when you're young and then go Diversified once you're older because you just want to highlight that for people that are you know like I was when
00:20:29
I was 18 to kind of go all in and to make those big bets when you have nothing to lose and the minute you have something to lose whether that's your
00:20:36
Mor Gage you know you got children to take care of or now you've got wealth to then go risk off is that the kind of
00:20:42
approach you would suggest to life I I think generally speaking you can't be as risk aggressive when you
00:20:47
have kids um when you're younger look if you screw up here you you're you're
00:20:53
you're likable enough that you can probably find couches to live on for 2 years if you need it too if you like
00:20:59
just got in over your skis uh you could find a way to dance when you're young you can dance Between
00:21:05
The Raindrops I lived in New York I had two two roommates when I started my business my girlfriend paid our rent and
00:21:11
I because I didn't I didn't have kids or dogs there's just a certain level of responsibility and things you got to
00:21:17
take care of as you get older when you get a little bit older don't go all in on anything if you're going to start a
00:21:22
business use other people's Capital ring fence it don't get seduced into the
00:21:27
worst thing that can happen in your 30s and 40s is you start a business and you start failing slowly you just don't know
00:21:33
the worst type of business is one that gives you just enough green signals that you keep investing more time and more
00:21:40
money like Red Envelope people that's what people know me for that's the worst thing that can happen to somebody
00:21:45
because it failed slowly it failed over 11 years I started an e-commerce
00:21:51
incubator in New York back by Goldman Sachs maveron um JP Morgan it was out of
00:21:56
business in8 months because of the dot meltdown that's a blessing the best thing that can happen is Success the
00:22:01
second best thing is fast failure the worst thing that can happen to you is slow failure you can't have slow failure
00:22:07
in your 30s and 40s so you want to make sure that if you go in on something you ring fence it I'm leaving my job I'm
00:22:13
going to try and start my own business I'm going to spend two years doing it a certain amount of capital no more than
00:22:19
maybe 10 20% of my Capital because hitting a wall and failing at 50 is is
00:22:26
much more devastating than hitting a wall or failing at 25 or 30 you can get up again you're fine you can press the
00:22:32
restart button a bunch of times so you want to take advantage of that in your 20s and 30s and workshop a bunch of
00:22:39
things I'm not saying hop around I'm not saying oh I don't love this it's not my passion no that probably means it's just
00:22:46
work but if you're not making progress if you're not making money if you're not getting roles in films if you're not if
00:22:53
everything's just really hard really hard you're in a position at that age to say you know what what I'm going to
00:22:59
leave Milan and move to Munich or I'm going to Dubai you have flexibility when you're young you have Geographic
00:23:05
flexibility leaning to your advantage it's a heck of a lot easier right now to make money in Dubai than it is in
00:23:13
Caracus right you'd rather be good in a great economy than outstanding in a
00:23:18
mediocre economy you have Geographic flexibility lean into your advantages your flexibility your ability to recover
00:23:25
your ability to Workshop what would you do for one of your Sons said to you how many sons have you got now I got two you
00:23:31
got two sons that I know of that you know of one of your sons comes to you and says Dad I would like to be a I've
00:23:37
read your book um all of your books and I think they're great but Dad I would love to be a professional actor and then
00:23:45
your other son came to you and said I want to be a musician I don't want to crush anybody's
00:23:50
dreams uh a go for it I'll be supportive um but this industry let's just look at
00:23:56
the economics musician and acting has a 99% unemployment rate so you got to be
00:24:02
in the 1% and I want you to set up benchmarks for determining what it means to be in the top 1% right 80 uh the most
00:24:10
talented actors in the world are in a union called sag Afra and by the way it's not easy to get your union card you
00:24:15
got to be in a Broadway play you got to be recognized that's a big moment it's like getting your PGA golf tour card
00:24:21
right you get your sag after cart it means you're one of the 180,000 most talented creatives in the world last
00:24:27
year 83% of them didn't have health insurance because they didn't make more than
00:24:32
$23,000 so you not only need to be in the top 177% just to have health insurance you probably need to be in the
00:24:38
top 10% realistically the top 1% I know a lot of working actors if I said this
00:24:44
is the guy from this show you'd be like oh my God that guy's amazing he's not making a lot of money I
00:24:50
mean everybody talks about Tom Cruz the majority of working actors you would say I know that woman I know that man
00:24:55
they're great they make an okay living if they had achieve that level of excellence in almost any other industry
00:25:02
they'd be they'd own a house and a second house in AA so if you want to be
00:25:08
an athlete an actor a model an artist open a restaurant open an iclub have a
00:25:14
jewelry line be a fashion designer I don't want to crush anyone's dreams but let's have a sober conversation that if
00:25:20
you aren't getting bright green lights that you're in the top 1% really quickly and we put some guard
00:25:26
rails on it we're going to do this for 2 years 3 years can't pay your rent in two or three years dad's going to stop
00:25:33
paying your rent at some point or maybe I'll continue to pay your rent but I need you to start workshopping another
00:25:38
career because here's the thing people of young people oftentimes mistake their hobbies for their passions and what I
00:25:45
would suggest is and what I can guarantee you is being successful at anything passion comes from
00:25:51
Mastery pasty comes from being a ninja at something I'm renovating a house and
00:25:56
there's this guy installing our soap stone who's the soapstone guy he's an Iraqi immigrant dropped out of high school he knows everything about so
00:26:03
soapstone you can talk to you about the vein in the soapstone and which cories and he makes I've been very open
00:26:09
with him I've talked about my book he made 1.3 million pounds last year he's the soapstone guy I can't imagine when
00:26:16
he was a kid he and I bonded over football I would bet I don't know this I would bet he dreamt of being a football
00:26:21
star and playing for a rock in the world cup at some point I doubt at the age of 17 he thought my I'm hoping in 15 years
00:26:28
I'm installing soap stone and Renovations for American douchebags and marab Bone I can't imagine that was his
00:26:34
dream right but here's the thing he has an amazing life he takes care of his
00:26:40
kids he takes care of his parents he gets to take amazing vacations with his
00:26:45
wife which makes him passionate about soapstone so yeah go be a fashion
00:26:52
designer but let's be honest if you're not making enough money to pay your rent within 2 years and you're not making
00:26:58
enough money to say form a family in 5 years we're going to Workshop something
00:27:03
else this requires such a mindset shift in the current world because obviously the slot machine the casino the Las
00:27:11
Vegas of validation is Instagram and Tik Tok now if I announce on Instagram that
00:27:16
I'm a tax lawyer for the next 10 years not a great Instagram it's not going to increase my chance of getting laate either but if I say that I am I don't
00:27:25
know if I say that I'm part of football club I'm in the you know the Junior
00:27:30
Academy yeah or if I say that I'm starting a business I'm probably going to get laid more in the next 10 years
00:27:36
well the only push back I would get is that you have to be one of the 10 best soccer players in the world that year to
00:27:43
play for Chelsea that is really hard that is really that means you're the
00:27:49
best player in Sagal and then you go I mean you just have to be Godlike
00:27:56
talented the best 10% of tax lawyers that's tens of
00:28:03
thousands of them fly private and get laid more than you think because they
00:28:08
fly private and they can afford they can find someone and give them a wonderful
00:28:14
life so I mean look in a capitalist I'm not saying this is how the world should
00:28:19
be I'm saying this how the world is economic security provides you with all sorts of opportunities for
00:28:26
experiences for relationships for romantic opportunities and it is sexy to be great
00:28:33
at anything and get Economic Security from anything and I can't tell you I love taking care of my kids because at
00:28:39
one point I was worried about my ability to take care of my kids and not worry about it and this is where happiness
00:28:45
comes from it's great to be in a Prestige industry and be a baller I get reward from some of the fame I have
00:28:50
right now I'm sure you get reward from it but the thing that is really rewarding as you get older is I can lean
00:28:57
into my relationships with my sons and I don't have that economic fear I had the first time my son came marching out of
00:29:02
my girlfriend that is so rewarding I can take care of my dad I don't have to
00:29:07
worry about it my my dad's 90 going to be 94 in a few weeks and he lives in a
00:29:14
really nice home and he has a full-time kind of health aid and it's about a quarter of a
00:29:20
million dollars a year to take care of my dad and if you look at okay that's post tax there's no tax credit for it so
00:29:26
it's about $400,000 in pre-tax income my sister who does really well but not
00:29:31
as well as me we have a great partnership she handles it logistically I handle the money and being able to do
00:29:37
that and not have it be a source of stress in my life and know that my dad has taken care of
00:29:42
well okay it'd be great to be a football player trust me when you get to my age
00:29:48
that feels really good that feels really nice and the the the the means to the
00:29:54
ends the means money is a means it's really important it's hard to be happy in a capless society with economic
00:30:00
stress the standing blood the resting blood pressure of kids in low-income homes is higher than kids in middle and
00:30:07
upper M because they sense the anxiety for Mom and Dad I remember you know losing my jacket when I was in the e8th
00:30:13
grade and it was going to be just a horrible day because I had to go home and tell my mom Jack is cost 33 bucks
00:30:19
all in my head very upsetting the ability to take care of your kids your parents do wonderful
00:30:27
things money affords you so many wonderful things that getting to a certain level of Economic Security is
00:30:33
the means but the ends the reason you get to Economic Securities is so you can free up and be free of anxiety and have
00:30:40
some additional time so you can focus on the ends and the ends is deep and meaningful relationships I spend the
00:30:46
majority of my money on travel and experiences with my family and friends I
00:30:52
spend a [ __ ] ton of money and I absolutely love it there's no reason to hoard money once I hit my number
00:30:58
I hit my number seven years ago and I started thinking I could be a billionaire what was your number uh my
00:31:05
number was 100 million by the way my number when I got out of college was a million and then by my 30s I thought
00:31:11
well if I had 10 million I'm done and then things got so expensive and my greed glance kept going and my number
00:31:17
was 100 million why have a number why did why do people listening need to create a number what's the value of
00:31:24
having that sort of Line in the Sand well you need a goal and you need to be thoughtful about how much money you're
00:31:29
going to need so if you figure out I'm going to need a I'm going to need 80,000 a year to live the definition of rich is
00:31:37
having a ton of [ __ ] and impress your friends the definition of wealth is knowing that the passive income that you
00:31:43
would get from growth from your stocks or dividends or incomes or rental income is greater than your burn so you work
00:31:49
you work out of out of uh option or you work because you want to not because you
00:31:55
need to that's the definition of wealth so having a number is just backward integrating into
00:32:01
okay um I want to have at least $3 million a year to live the life I want
00:32:07
to live all right assuming a 4% return that means I need $75 million so I
00:32:14
rounded up to 100 million right I got exceptionally lucky to get there by the way see above in 2008 I was broke I was
00:32:21
broke at the age of 4243 that did not feel good I got very lucky started a
00:32:27
company bull market the last 16 years right place right time exceptionally lucky but you should be able you should
00:32:34
have a number you should say this is the amount of money I need and once I get to this number enjoy it and start giving it
00:32:41
away we we really need to because I'm thinking about the lens that I kind of think
00:32:46
about this conversation through is like different stages in my own journey and the advice that I would have wanted from you at different steps in my journey and
00:32:52
I I just flashed back to working in those call centers where I was making just about enough money to well to be
00:32:58
fair if I'm being completely honest I did have disposable income but when I was poor I was Reckless with my money
00:33:04
mhm so I would get the £500 disposable income on payday leave the call center go and buy a 400 TV flat screen TV and
00:33:12
put it in a room where the TV was as big as the wall of my room all right and I'm trying to I'm really trying to zoom in
00:33:18
on that person who is so far away from nine figures yeah and they're like okay Scott I want to be Scott Galloway so
00:33:23
what is the set of steps or the mindset the fishing rod I need in my mind become Scott Galloway nine figures well the
00:33:30
first is the first is some of it is luck a again a lot of my successes if I'd been born in Europe I don't think I'd
00:33:36
have that number Europe's not as forgiving of entrepreneurs that have failed I've had a lot of failure if I lived in China I think there's a decent
00:33:42
chance I'd be in jail so the smart again the smartest thing I've ever done was being born in California so you saying
00:33:48
to move does that matter what's that should I move City oh if you're young the first thing you want to do is to get
00:33:53
to one of 20 super cities if you're I'm just talking about someone who wants to be an economic analy right you might who doesn't okay but
00:34:01
some people might say Scott it's your way it's not the right way I want to teach coach football in my little
00:34:08
village outside in the Amalfi Coast I can make 55,000 working running a small
00:34:15
bakery and have a really nice life I think they would have clicked more power to you that's not the majority of the
00:34:21
people I hang out with majority of the young people I hear from realize that capitalism the wealth equals relevance
00:34:27
and love in a capitalist society and they want to be economically very secure the easiest thing the best piece of
00:34:34
advice is one get credentialed we live in a LinkedIn economy what you did your
00:34:40
success is especially impressive because on average people who get a college degree earn 50 to 100% more over the
00:34:46
course of their life there's an entire set of industries that are off limits to
00:34:52
people that don't have credentialing I worked to work for Morgan Stanley we not only didn't hire people without college
00:34:58
degrees we didn't hire people that didn't go to one of eight universities when I applied eight you had to not only
00:35:04
go to college you had to go to one of eight colleges to get a job at Morgan Stanley at that time so if you can get
00:35:11
credentialing the second thing not everyone's cut out for college I get that the second thing is get to a super City two-thirds of all economic growth
00:35:17
over the next 30 Years is going to take place in one of 20 cities so if you're in that small town in Italy you want to
00:35:24
get to Milan as quickly as possible and then if you can you want to get to London as quickly as possible or Munich
00:35:30
or a bigger city and then quite frankly if you have total Geographic agility and flexibility ignoring the ridiculous ins
00:35:37
of the US you want to get to New York or San Francisco because to be good in San Francisco is much better than being
00:35:44
amazing in stutgart the amount of economic here's the thing I'm I'm a
00:35:51
mediocre I'm a mediocre Surfer I've actually even given it up but when I was young and I used to go to Hawaii and the
00:35:57
waves were perfect perfect I started believing I was a good Surfer where I go to Aspen after a Fresh coat of snow and I'm like I'm a decent skier no you're
00:36:03
not the snow and the waves are [ __ ] amazing anyone could be a good skier in this [ __ ] get to where the waves in the
00:36:10
snow are amazing and that's generally speaking in cities and when you're young
00:36:16
you can be in a city because you can live in a 400 foot apartment you can be out of the house all day you can dance
00:36:22
Between The Raindrops and make money but when you are in a city you know how when you play tennis if you play with someone
00:36:27
much better than you it elevates your game when you're in a city you're playing against Serena Williams every
00:36:34
day everyone is smart everyone is well dressed everyone is working hard
00:36:40
everyone is Taking Chances and you are surrounded by people who are very successful and you are going to bump off
00:36:47
professional and personal opportunity every day do it while you're young because when you start collecting dogs and kids as I did in my 30s I could no
00:36:55
longer afford to stay in New York so so I had to move to Delray Beach in Florida when I say have to we have a wonderful
00:37:01
life down there there's not a fraction of the opportunities in Del Ray Beach for someone in their 20s and 30s now I
00:37:07
already had professional momentum but Sunday to Thursday night I was commuting to New York because that's where the
00:37:13
action was so one credentialing but two absolutely get to one of 20 super cities
00:37:18
when you say 20 super cities I thinking now we're having this conversation in a world where AI seems to be the biggest
00:37:25
topic of conversation it seems to be ripping up many Industries but it I also reflect on that I go where is the AI
00:37:31
opportunity going to be if that is the biggest wave coming into Shore in terms of opportunity um should I be playing my
00:37:37
sort of geographical um decision- making based on artificial intelligence because everyone's raving about how big of an
00:37:43
opportunity that is and Technology generally over the next 10 years seems like it's really going to eat up a lot of uh industry yeah I don't I don't know
00:37:50
if it' be possible to determine geography based on AI what I would say is okay you know every literally a to my
00:37:57
class NYU they get on a plane for San Francisco the day they graduate there's just within a s mile radius of San
00:38:05
Francisco International Airport there's been more wealth created I think in the last six months than than Germany's
00:38:14
created in the last decade Nvidia is worth more than the entire UK stock market nvidia's they make the they're
00:38:21
basically they make the brains for artificial intelligence they make a GPU which is essentially a microchip that
00:38:26
powers all AI right now and no one can buy them fast enough now they have 30,000 people I would bet 10 or 15,000
00:38:34
of them are worth at least $10 million now because the 30,000 employees got
00:38:41
stock options and when a company goes from from 300 billion to 3 trillion it
00:38:46
means everyone is getting rich that doesn't happen that often in Dortmund it
00:38:54
doesn't happen that often it doesn't happen I mean kind right you grow up in engl do you either go to work for Audi
00:39:01
nothing wrong with that make a good living but if you're young and you think I really want to get in front of the biggest waves you want to go to one of
00:39:07
several cities you want to have the winds at your back so if you're young what do you have you have agility
00:39:13
geographically but going back you initially asked me what's the algorithm what are the steps and I tried to the
00:39:19
book's called the algebra wealth I tried to distill it down to a a small number of of features the first is focus go all
00:39:28
in on something once you find you work shop in your 20s once you find something you're really good at that you could be
00:39:33
in the top 1% at and here's the key part as we referenced before that has a 90 plus perc employment rate and 90% of
00:39:41
Industries have that but if you can be in the top 10% of an industry that has a 90 plus perc employment rate you're
00:39:47
going to make really good money first thing Focus try not to have side hustles if you have a side hustle it means your
00:39:53
main hustle isn't working use side hustle to Workshop new main hustles but once you find something you're really
00:39:59
good at go all in on it can I pause there just as we keep going cuz I want to just provide counter arguments just
00:40:05
in case certain people are objecting in their own minds I I think about me in the southwest of England as I grew up
00:40:12
and I was in pouth working at a MacDonald's I worked there for two days but I worked in retail and shops and
00:40:17
stuff what I had at that moment I in hindsight was a void of information so
00:40:28
I could only work at like a clothing store and a McDonald's because I didn't have any other information and if a kid
00:40:34
hasn't gone to University or similar things just haven't hasn't got the information and they've stumbled across across this podcast but they're working
00:40:40
in I don't know like the equivalent of a Wendy's or Burger King for example and they just like how do I get out of this
00:40:46
Burger King Scott I'm a cashier at Burger King yeah
00:40:51
look I I don't I I I want to be clear I think there is a certain
00:40:57
downside to the notion that we live in a meritocracy and it creates a lot of rage and shame among young people and that is
00:41:03
the notion that in America especially anyone can be anything well not really boss because the problem with thinking
00:41:09
we live in a meritocracy is that if you don't make it you [ __ ] up it's your fault yeah and there's dignity in every
00:41:15
work what I would say to someone working in a Burger King or in fast food that want something bigger work really I was
00:41:23
on the board of Panera Bread which is a fast food chain or Quick Service they call it qsr they like the term someone
00:41:29
who was hardworking and showed up at work every day on time and worked with their colleagues and acted like they own
00:41:35
the place probably within two years could be managing the place and making 60 or 80 grand a year now I'm not
00:41:42
suggesting you go all in on food but there's always dignity in work there's always opportunity for people who work
00:41:48
hard and act like owners and are good people and try and look out for other people and are good
00:41:53
managers that might just be for you a means to an end where you're working work shopping other stuff to say how do
00:41:59
I get to to school how do I get to training how do I find a better job how do I save for a one-year apprenticeship
00:42:06
program to become an electrician how do I start meeting people you got to pay your bills there's dignity in all work I
00:42:12
coach a lot of young men and the first thing I say is you got to start making some money and they're like I'm not going to work at CVS or at McDonald's
00:42:18
I'm like yeah you are because you need a taste for flesh the best way to make a lot of money is to start making a little
00:42:24
bit of money but have a plan I want to be the assistant manager of this McDonald's I want to save enough money
00:42:31
so I can go back to school I want to save enough money so I can move to Dubai or move to London and get a job there
00:42:37
that might be higher paying is there anything about the CVS or the Burger King or the whatever that I should be
00:42:43
looking at to check that it has room for me to grow there is there anything that you know if we're starting by making a
00:42:49
little bit of money is there any good place to make a little bit of money versus a bad place to make a little bit
00:42:54
of money well growth sort of solves solve problems so if you're working at a
00:42:59
Chipotle Doug McMillan who's the CEO of Walmart started uh loading trucks he
00:43:05
worked in the Loading Docks but he was also working for the retailer That Grew faster than any retailer in history so
00:43:12
is your company growing uh first thing growth kind of solves all problems right if you were
00:43:18
mediocre at Google you did a lot better than if you were great at General Motors
00:43:23
the last 20 years because one was growing one wasn't so so is it growing two is more situational do I have
00:43:30
someone who's emotionally invested in My Success here is the manager of the store like me and saying keep doing this I'm
00:43:37
going to get you an assistant manager job at the store down the street am I learning right am I getting skills that
00:43:44
challenge me is this a little bit hard that's okay is it stressful that's okay
00:43:49
too you don't want stress go be a security guarden a parking lot no stress no upside the market is really good at
00:43:55
trading off the more stressful and tense and like God I can't keep up here that probably means you're learning that
00:44:00
probably means you're going to make more money so am I learning do I have senior level sponsorship am I in a company
00:44:06
that's growing am I in a city where there's economic Vitality do I have flow
00:44:12
flow of interesting people flow of interesting friends that I might start another business with flow of potential
00:44:18
one and three relationships begin at work and every hr's hair is on HR manager hair is on fire right now one
00:44:24
and three relationships begin at work we talk about that a third of all relationships begin at work and 99% of
00:44:32
them are consensual right young people have to find a place to to find other mates if you will but there's a ser and
00:44:39
then more importantly I think than all of this is assembling a kitchen cabinet of people that will you can be really
00:44:46
honest with I'm working at Burger King I think I'm doing pretty well there they want to make me managers at In-N-Out
00:44:52
Burger make about 110 $120,000 a year in in the US and they're even given a
00:44:58
chance to participate in profit sharing and I'm not suggesting being fast food the rest of your life but have a plan
00:45:03
and then you got to have a kitchen cabinet put together a group of three four people who know you who you trust
00:45:11
you and you can be totally transparent this how much money I'm making these are my opportunities these are this is what
00:45:16
I'm good at what I'm not good at what do you think I should do and who are those people in terms of are they people that are ahead of you in in the race of life
00:45:23
or are they first off don't approach someone and say I I find you I want you to be my mentor right cuz that's a high
00:45:30
bar and a lot of people are really busy it's like hey uh I I'm I think you're really impressive a neighbor someone
00:45:37
who's made it doesn't have to be a baller but someone who's living a virtuous life who seems smart and nice to you can I get some advice from you
00:45:44
can I would you mind I just have questions can we do a call can we have a coffee there are a lot of people out
00:45:50
there who want to help younger people and take it as a compliment can I get your advice ask them for advice don't
00:45:57
make big decisions without talking to other people it is really hard to read
00:46:03
the label from inside of the bottle really hard right check in with people
00:46:09
save save yourself from yourself so that kitchen cabinet and if you're like if
00:46:15
you're a young woman working at a Burger King and you hopefully you meet some people and say hey can I just get some
00:46:22
advice for and by the way it might be someone else working at Burger King like this person has a act together this this person just has her acting she's just
00:46:28
smart we all know those people we meet them and we work with them like you know this person just kind of Switched on
00:46:33
they just seem to have better judgment around certain issues so what I would say is have a plan don't be afraid to
00:46:39
make changes put together a kitchen cabinet realize there's dignity in all work and any company even something
00:46:46
you'd see as low brow like fast food those organizations need talented people
00:46:51
to go up the ranks and make money because the turnover is enormous so I think think there's opportunity and
00:46:57
dignity in any work you said something really interesting which I I don't think I've ever had anybody talk about before which is you said don't ask someone to
00:47:05
be your mentor and I Frank I get asked to be someone's Mentor several times a week as I'm sure you do yeah and I've
00:47:11
never given people advice on why that isn't the right right approach but you said there that you don't think that's the right approach so I wanted to just
00:47:18
pause and ask you why well you don't go up to a strange person and say do you want to have sex you go up and say do
00:47:23
you want to have and do you want to have a conversation do you want to have another drink do you want to grab coffee do you want to go to the
00:47:29
movies can I ask you a question can I get some advice from you you ease into the relationship because to ask someone
00:47:36
to be your Mentor is just very intimidating the person has to go do I want to meet with this person every month for the next five years and then
00:47:42
break up with them if it you know if I'm not enjoying this relationship so you don't need to say will you be my mentor
00:47:48
that sounds like a lot just can I get your advice on something I really respect you I think you're so smart about this stuff I'm I'm facing some
00:47:54
issues in my life some questions I'd love to just just get your advice can we grab coffee or can we do a five or 10-minute call if someone emails me and
00:48:01
says I'm thinking I get a lot I'm thinking about starting a business I'm thinking about going to business school can I get some time I try to say yes and
00:48:08
I say I can do I can do a 15-minute Zoom call with you if someone asks me to be their Mentor there's just no way I I
00:48:14
don't have time to you know I can barely Mentor me right now the I just don't have time to commit to being someone's
00:48:21
Mentor but if someone emails me and says I need advice around the specific issue and then what happens
00:48:27
you hear that they're you they're raised by a single mother like me they're a good person they're struggling their
00:48:32
sister's got an eating disorder and they're struggling with it and they're trying to they're thinking about starting a business and you're like oh
00:48:39
no no don't do that right now you've got a good job like you just make some you just help them with some common sense
00:48:45
decisions common sense and then what happens you become emotionally invested in their success
00:48:52
and then they email you a month later and you're like what's going on and you want to do another call you know ease into it so anyways I think it's much
00:48:59
easier to just ask someone for help and for advice and I think there's a lot of people out there you doesn't have to be
00:49:05
a baller like step Bartlett there's a lot of smart people out there that can give you good advice because I think
00:49:11
this is really important I I don't think I've as I said I don't think I've had anyone talk about this but you get a lot
00:49:16
of messages have you been able to figure out exactly why some of them perk your
00:49:22
interest so much so that you'd give them 15 minutes on a zoom call is is there is there a sort of a psychological formula
00:49:29
that gets to you well the first is okay first off brevity when I get like a long
00:49:36
you know a novel I'm just not going to get through it uh obviously and this is hard to control but they reference
00:49:43
someone you know or they they make a connection we're both graduates of Berkeley or I met you I came up to you
00:49:49
and said hi to you at can or we have a mutual friend or I too was raised by a
00:49:56
single they make some sort of personal connection and they make the ass very crisply I'm writing because I'd love
00:50:01
some advice around this I'm writing because I'd like an introduction I'm writing because I'm applying for your
00:50:07
position for managing editor for prop media just like get to the point what's the ask and try and make some sort of
00:50:14
personal connection and the other thing I would say although I hate you know I don't want to encourage people to do this be persistent because a lot of times I get
00:50:20
an email I think it's a good kid I should really set up a call or something and then I go on to the next 85 emails I
00:50:26
have and I don't even remember getting that email so I would say don't be afraid to hit again and just say hey
00:50:32
just putting at the top of your inbox know you're busy if I can grab 10 minutes your time I'd be really appreciative and also don't get
00:50:39
discouraged if they don't get back to you that's okay it's not a reflection on you go on to the next just don't write
00:50:47
it off that's okay don't worry about it don't worry about it I have a I have a bubbling thesis on this that um if you
00:50:54
just talk kids you know your kids my future kids how to ask for things in life the impact that that would have on
00:51:00
their long-term trajectory is unbelievably profound because I if I think back through my life when I was 18
00:51:07
years old stealing those pizzas in Manchester or every step along the way some of my big pivotal moments in my
00:51:14
trajectory were sending an email yeah and yeah pretty like yeah pretty much
00:51:20
all of them started with sending an email but we don't teach people how to send an email and you're you're on the
00:51:26
receiving end of thousands of emails every month or whatever so you can see bad and good from a bird's eye view and
00:51:32
the things you've just said there I completely agree with the the size of the the message um being specific in the
00:51:37
askk as you said um playing to Ego in some way letting them know that you've read something you've done or you're interested in them or you know someone
00:51:44
all those things has such a big such a big impact I think if you think about your life and you go okay I'm going to
00:51:49
live for I'm going to live a hundred years and I'm probably going to ask for things 10,000 times if I can increase my
00:51:56
success rate of those asks by 10% because I'm just more thoughtful in how I ask for things my life could end
00:52:03
up in a completely different place mhm kind of like what you said about you only need a couple of wins to really be successful in life you only need if you
00:52:09
send 10 10 emails you only need like one person to say yes I'll invest and and be willing to endure the rejection of the
00:52:15
nine I had a kid this young kid come up to me I was just in can I'm a big fan
00:52:21
can I take a picture with your selfie yeah boom 10 seconds take a selfie send me an email yes yesterday with a picture
00:52:27
of the selfie and said we met we didn't have a chance to say hi I'm struggling with I'm and he was quite vulnerable he
00:52:33
told me about some of the stuff he's going through and said I'm struggling and uh would you mind doing a 10 or 15 minute call with me and he includes a
00:52:39
picture of me and him how the [ __ ] am I going to say no to that right anyway there you know there's all sorts of
00:52:45
tricks and trades but the willingness to take that risk the willingness to reach out to strangers that's the key to
00:52:51
success that's I mean it's the reason I have kids it's the reason I'm wealthy
00:52:57
um nothing wonderful is going to happen to you without uh uh taking an uncomfortable risk so I think about this
00:53:04
with my boys I used to force them or ask them to speak to a stranger every time we were outside of the house my oldest one has no problem my youngest one
00:53:10
doesn't like it really hard okay we sit outside the door for 10 minutes just go
00:53:16
ask them what breed their dog is over there just go over there just ask them about their dog because the I think a
00:53:21
good strategy especially for young men who uh for some reason seem to be sequestering and becoming much more
00:53:27
isolated whenever you're in a line talk to the person in front of you and behind you just talk to them just get used to
00:53:33
opening just get used to eye contact just get used to being friendly and having a conversation because I think
00:53:40
people are spending so much time indoors and behind screens they're losing the ability to establish professional and
00:53:46
personal connection so I think certain cognitive behavior or or training around
00:53:52
how to be friendly and how to endure rejection one of the most revealing things I've I've noticed about you as a
00:53:59
person is what you just said about that kid that emailed you yesterday mhm because as you said I could see the
00:54:05
emotion in your face yeah look what do you want as a species you want to feel certain things right you want to feel
00:54:11
you know the most rewarding things are Sensations and feelings and I get really moved by these kids sometimes you know
00:54:17
you relate to them I relate to young men who are struggling because I was one of them and so this stuff really sometimes
00:54:24
you know what you want in life is a a group of people who are emotionally
00:54:29
invested in your success and then as you get older the most rewarding thing is to let other people let you be emotionally
00:54:36
invested in their success right I want my boys to love me but what is the most rewarding thing is that they let me love
00:54:43
them that's the most rewarding thing right there are these vessels that I get to pour this like affection into that's
00:54:48
the most rewarding thing as you get older so yeah I think about this stuff a lot and I get why did he move you well
00:54:56
just the picture and I I don't want to divulge but he's struggling he's really going through some
00:55:01
issues uh uh with addiction and self harm and depression and and also by the
00:55:08
way is obviously a very talented kid is very smart is working in you know has a high-profile job and is struggling with
00:55:16
addiction and self harm I mean and you think Jesus this [ __ ] is real right this is really really tough for this kid and
00:55:24
uh you just realize I think so many young people we're raising my colleague at NYU
00:55:30
wrote this book that's this is the book we wish we'd written U the anxious generation Jonathan Hyde oh yeah that's
00:55:38
literally the most infu he's now the most influential scholar probably globally and the takeaway is we're
00:55:45
raising despite our prosperity in the US we're raising the most anxious depressed
00:55:50
obese and addicted generation in history and you can just sense it
00:55:55
there's so many young people out there that are really struggling that aren't happy that don't have the opportunities
00:56:03
that my generation had and then time 210 times a day they're reminded that
00:56:08
they're not doing well as someone else vomits their FA success and experiences all over them that oh wait I didn't make
00:56:16
I didn't I didn't make a million dollars in Nvidia and I'm not parting in Sant Trope I'm a failure right and there
00:56:23
there are opportunities for professional and romantic success are going down people aren't dating one out of three
00:56:30
men under the age of 30 has a girlfriend yeah I mean there's just so many you can just tell young people are really really
00:56:36
struggling and I think about that a lot and uh you know it moves me because a
00:56:43
few fortunate decisions a few random emails you know things could have been
00:56:49
much different for me and I I so I really I do relate to these especially
00:56:54
to young men I relate to the struggles they're facing you you talked about making
00:56:59
decisions in the algebra of wealth um and I get asked this a lot um kids come
00:57:05
up to me at the end of a talk that I do or some other event and will ask me about decisions like yeah jump off
00:57:11
points in their life as you zoom out on life is there anything that I can know about how to be a great decision maker
00:57:18
over the context of 50 years of life is there anything about how to make a decision greatness is in the agency of
00:57:25
others you you're not this B the business you built is not going to get Beyond a certain point unless you have
00:57:31
the ability to attract and retain really talented people great decisions are in the agency of others we have some weird
00:57:37
notion of leadership I used to think leadership when I was a younger man was quickly assessing the situation deciding
00:57:43
what we should do and then advocating for my course of action that was leadership and it was more important to
00:57:50
me to be right than effective or to get people to agree with my decision than to make the right decision what you want is
00:57:57
you want to get to the correct decision that has the best outcome for everybody and be open to change and
00:58:03
evolving and the way you do that I don't make a big decision now without speaking to at least three people so you want to
00:58:09
make better decisions then slow the process down there slow and fast thinking and get the benefit of other
00:58:16
people and expertise is there any decision that I should make slow versus fast is there a framework for how to
00:58:23
know what you sometimes I think I find in business that the cost is the time I
00:58:28
waste trying to make the decision and then sometimes in business the cost is the outcome of the decision well yeah there's been books written about this
00:58:34
but basically every day there's thousands or hundreds of decisions you have to make instantly like do I go on the red light do I not go do I you know
00:58:41
there's a ton of things you have to do saying thank you pardon me whatever there's a ton of decisions you have to
00:58:46
make every day so we get into a framework of sometimes where we don't slow down and have the luxury of making
00:58:53
a good decision the other thing is that I've tried to do is I try to screen out unimportant decisions and this is a
00:58:59
luxury but as I've gotten a little bit of money I don't make decisions around anything I mean this sounds weird I
00:59:05
don't order when I'm in a restaurant I don't order I basically ask the waiter to order for me I have a uniform at work
00:59:12
I don't pick out my own clothes I have a group of people who manage you know I'm like you're in charge of all decisions
00:59:18
here I try to focus only on the decisions I can bring a lot of value to so I can spend a lot of time being really thoughtful about them um but
00:59:25
generally speaking for a young person that's not in the position of Outsourcing a lot of decision- making what I would say is get a kit again goes
00:59:31
back to the notion of a kitchen cabinet get a group of people who will you might end up at the same place but they'll say
00:59:37
have you thought about this or why wouldn't you just do why wouldn't you just have you know do XY or Z or I think
00:59:43
you know who have the leadership skills and know you well enough to go you know Stephen I think you're making a mistake here when I was 26 I started a company
00:59:50
called profit brand strategy strategy firm 6 years later when I was 33 I was
00:59:55
offered 55 million for it uh from Sapient Nitro and another
01:00:00
firm called scient 55 million I owned 60 70% of the company so I would have been
01:00:09
done but I was under the no this is the Internet it's going to be huge we're going to be worth a billion I if I just
01:00:16
had a board if I just called a couple people they would I know they would have said what the [ __ ] you thinking I was
01:00:23
doing 3 million a year Consulting and this firm offered me $55
01:00:30
million if I had just talked to someone they kind of got let me get okay so Scott you've been offered 18 times
01:00:37
revenues for a small strategy Services Company also around relationships right
01:00:44
when I talk to some of my friends or younger men I know who are really upset with their spouse I'm like be
01:00:51
clear yeah this is an issue but you're not bringing a lot of generosity and forgiveness to the relationship and if
01:00:56
you don't bring those things your marriage to this person or anyone else is not going to survive I didn't figure
01:01:02
this out till I was older but you will always naturally inflate your own contribution to the relationship and
01:01:07
some and and diminish theirs and the relationship is never going to be in Perfect Harmony or
01:01:13
balance so in those periods of deficit you've got to bring forgiveness you've
01:01:18
got to bring patience otherwise no long-term relationship is going to survive and also be pretty clear if you
01:01:24
split up right now just know you're going to lose 70% of your net worth maybe 60 but plan on 70 you split
01:01:30
everything and then the cost of lawyers and I can guarantee you if you have to sell a house that'll be the exact wrong
01:01:37
moment to sell it it's just Karma just Karma so just keep in mind there's a lot
01:01:43
of good reasons to stay together in a marriage and try and figure it out is marriage good for wealth oh yeah really
01:01:51
because I don't want to lose 50 70% of my money or whatever well you'll have that guy on who's on talk all over the
01:01:56
place say think it's a failed technology the majority of really wealthy people uh have long-term relationships and are in
01:02:02
a monogamous relationship they're married because the team is a fantastic way to build wealth but if if the stats
01:02:09
are true and you know 50 whatever 50 whatever percent of people are getting divorces doesn't that mean that if I'm
01:02:14
Building Wealth there's a 50 odd percent chance that I'm going to lose half of it if I'm married or more well first off if
01:02:21
you have wealth going in get a prenup yeah but what I would say is um
01:02:26
and first off that number is a bit misleading because marriage is becoming a luxury item two uh it used to be 95%
01:02:34
of wealthy people got married and 85% of middle class and poor people got married it's dropped to less than half among
01:02:39
poor people the bottom line is no one wants to mate with poor men and uh wealthy people attract a lot of mates
01:02:45
and generally speaking really wealthy people I mean there's all this you know there's all these it's fun to do Tik TOS
01:02:51
about Jeff Bezos on a on a yacht with his new girlfriend and everything but the major majority of wealthy people are
01:02:57
actually uh uh stay married and the team is really powerful you know we're both
01:03:04
working together we're both making a lot of money that is really powerful and steering one set of expenses you're going to focus on the logistics of our
01:03:11
life or our family and my wife's the professional baller right the team the
01:03:16
team is powerful so this notion that you shouldn't get married or I'm not I'm not
01:03:22
suggesting the marriages for anybody or stay stay married no matter what I'm not us that at all but there's just no
01:03:27
getting around it the team is much more powerful than the individual and if you if you break down the numbers of people
01:03:33
who are wealthy they generally speaking invest a lot in their relationships wealth is a whole person
01:03:40
project there's a myth that rich people are bad people the Elizabeth Warren Bernie Sanders the billionaires crawled
01:03:46
over other people to get there it's just not true what you generally find among wealthy people especially people who've
01:03:53
made their own money is that the one of the reasons they're wealthy is they've collected allies along the way and just
01:04:00
as compounding is so powerful with small Investments when you're young bringing some generosity to people when they need
01:04:06
help being a good friend occasionally checking in how are you doing helping people find jobs when they lose a job
01:04:11
being kind those little Investments you make as a young person really add up and you're going to find this I have all
01:04:19
these great friendships now with people I was never great friends with but because we made small investments in
01:04:25
each other over 20 or 30 years just checked in how you doing congrats how you're doing this congrats on your
01:04:31
wedding maybe not even close friends you wake up in your 50s and you have millions of dollars in
01:04:37
terms of a relationship you feel close to these people you feel like a real nice sense
01:04:43
of comedy with them you really and this is very true of wealthy
01:04:48
people you want to be put in a room of opportunity even when you're not there
01:04:55
so Google did a study when they put out a job opening for a product manager they'll get 200 resumés within a few
01:05:02
hours they invite the 20 best in 80% of the time the offer that's made is made
01:05:08
to somebody who has a evangelist Advocate friend in the company so this
01:05:15
is who you need to be you need to be that person who's like oh there's a job
01:05:20
opening here I have this woman who would be great and then next them you need to
01:05:27
be in a room you want to be successful professionally be successful personally go out make friends be kind invest in
01:05:35
them help them when there's no obvious reason to help them and those Investments pay off and generally
01:05:42
speaking and this is not a popular narrative the majority of very wealthy people I have met and I've met a lot of
01:05:48
them are kind they're generous very civic-minded very good mates so this
01:05:55
Trope of you know of Monty Burns lighting cigars with $100 bills and
01:06:01
owning the the nuclear power plant and pouring you know radioactive waste into the river that's a cartoon the majority
01:06:08
of self-made people who are really wealthy are good kind people because you
01:06:14
have to have allies along the way to be really successful can anyone start a company in your view can anyone become a
01:06:21
successful entrepreneur oh no you there's there's certain attributes that most people don't have
01:06:27
what are these traits first and foremost you have to be really risk aggressive and have that willingness to fail you're
01:06:33
willing to take huge risks I speak to people all the time who say well I'm going to go get a job at Google or JP
01:06:39
Morgan for a few years then I'll have the credibility to start a business I'm like you're not an entrepreneur most entrepreneurs 70% of entrepreneurs are
01:06:46
immigrants that don't have access to corporate Britain or Corporate America by the way if you have access to Google
01:06:54
all these kids come to my office hours when I say kids and mind students and they want to ask they don't want to talk
01:06:59
about brand strategy they want to talk about careers and they say I have an offer from JP Morgan or Google but I'm
01:07:04
thinking about starting my own business and I know you've started a lot of business and they think I'm going to say go for it I'm like don't be a [ __ ]
01:07:10
idiot go to work for Google on a risk adjusted basis the most unbelievable platform for generating wealth and
01:07:17
opportunity and long-term Economic Security is the American corporation
01:07:22
these are unbelievable platforms to get rich with some certainty slowly and
01:07:29
sometimes quickly in the Tech Community if you have access to those platforms
01:07:34
unless you hate it and are terrible at it you should go that way the majority of entrepreneurs are immigrants and why
01:07:41
why is that because they didn't have any choice they didn't have access to Corporate America they had to open a dry
01:07:47
cleaner they had to start a soap stone company entrepreneurship you have to be
01:07:52
risk aggressive willing to take risks two to be really successful at it you
01:07:57
have to be um a great salesperson you have to be willing to convince people to invest buy your
01:08:03
products you have to be willing most importantly to sell people on your vision and believe that you're a good
01:08:08
person that if you're successful they're going to be successful what's the best way to train that muscle if I'm
01:08:15
young gosh I don't know for me it was um look I I think the core competence
01:08:22
you would want any kid your kid to inherit if I could give my kids any skill I
01:08:28
remember in the tonus preschools and I'm sorry high schools they had Mandarin
01:08:33
that was just stupid or computer science I believe that replacing history and
01:08:39
civics class with computer science you get Mark Zuckerberg you get these mendacious [ __ ] who are billionaires but don't care about the health of the
01:08:45
Commonwealth the greatest skill you can develop or that you would want your kids to have that will stand the test of time
01:08:52
is storytelling the ability to craft a narrative and then convince people get
01:08:57
people engaged in your narrative and think oh your company makes sense you're not going to come in and say I'm
01:09:02
starting a software company you're going to say this is the technology this is the marketplace this is why Society
01:09:07
needs this these are our unique skill set and you can craft it into a story that is compelling right it's the key
01:09:15
it's the key to scoring above your weight class romantically right communicating a plan communicating
01:09:21
kindness communicating empathy communicating um humor right any industry Jeet Bas was 1997
01:09:28
shareholder letter you read that letter you just want to buy stock I don't care how overvalued it is when you listen to
01:09:35
Jensen hang talk about the future of AI and biology and Healthcare you're like well maybe I should buy it even though
01:09:42
it's trading at 110 times earnings if you want to be a great CEO you got to be a great I don't care if you're my Angelou rousi synak or you know Jensen
01:09:50
Hong the core competence of any really successful person or the core comp Ence
01:09:55
that's going to get you real influence in Economic Security is storytelling so
01:10:02
it's so interesting because um I completely agree with everything you've said about how at the very heart
01:10:09
of wealth creation as an entrepreneur but but more generally in life whether you want to be a president a prime minister or a philanthropist is this
01:10:15
idea to craft narrative but um the average how does the average person
01:10:20
develop that skill when they don't they're not a lecturer they don't have students that they can speak in front of they don't have a podcast necessarily
01:10:26
that people are going to listen to but if we both agree that it's such an integral skill the transformative life
01:10:31
skill oh there's a million ways the the first thing I assign my students my kids
01:10:36
in the class is pick a medium it can be Instagram it can be X it can be threads
01:10:44
it can be Pinterest LinkedIn Public Presentation speaking radio podcasting identify what it would
01:10:51
mean to be in the top 1% you can go online what are the top % of followers on Instagram how many followers do you
01:10:57
need to be in the top 1% on Instagram by the end of the semester you need to be a top 1% Storyteller on a
01:11:04
medium I'm really good at this you're really good at podcasting I'm really good in front of a large crowd I'm not
01:11:12
very good on the phone I'm pretty terrible one-on-one I come across as a Loof yet insecure at the same time which
01:11:18
isn't easy to do so I know the medium I'm not good on the phone I'm I've
01:11:24
become a proficient writer I I aspire to be a great writer I'm good now someday I'll be great but I know my mediums and
01:11:32
I practice storytelling every day I'm either writing I'm either speaking I'm either podcasting if you're young oh my
01:11:40
God the mediums are you good on Tik Tok get a smartphone get a you know iMovie
01:11:45
start editing and every day make small iterations and changes and commit to being a great Storyteller and the
01:11:51
wonderful things about these mediums and the economy and these Technologies is you can be a great
01:11:58
Storyteller anywhere from any background and from any location I'm not suggesting that you that everybody has the same
01:12:06
opportunities but the opportunities the reason why Hollywood is struggling the reason why the writers for striking for
01:12:13
four months only got a 5% increase in pay is that there are 1.7 billion people
01:12:18
on Tik Tok and 850 million of them are creators which is a fancy term for Storyteller and assume 1% of them are
01:12:25
outstanding storytellers all of a sudden 8 and a half million new storytellers
01:12:30
have come into the media market and the half a million in La who think their work is so [ __ ] precious and are
01:12:36
trying to figure out why their industry is in Decline like you're competing against eight and a half million new storytellers that aren't asking for pet
01:12:43
bement leave or for a trailer with catered food the ability to tell craft a
01:12:50
narrative find your medium and then say I'm going to be in the top 1% what is the algebra to storytelling if there had
01:12:58
to be one if you I know you've not had time that's really interesting I thought about that I think of it as one you just have to be a
01:13:04
compelling I mean it sounds terrible but like I have a handsome voice I was I
01:13:10
have a face for podcasting I've had five TV shows they've all been canceled within like four weeks podcasting is my
01:13:15
Medium television television is not you've done really well on podcasting and video right that says something I
01:13:23
would say that more than anything it's tapping into people's emotions like how do you make someone
01:13:29
feel something I mean you want to be smart you want to say interesting things but how do you really connect with someone and make them feel something the
01:13:36
wide space I'm trying to occupy is I'm trying to be a white
01:13:42
heterosexual male in his 50s who's open about his emotions that's a wide space
01:13:48
guys my age don't talk about their failures they don't talk about the way they feel about their kids they don't talk about you know how devastated they
01:13:54
were when the mother died that shit's just not talked about among men of my demographic that's the white space I'm
01:14:02
occupying so you need to say okay what am I going to make people feel that other people aren't spending a
01:14:09
lot of time evoking getting people to understand those emotions it's uh I
01:14:14
think the specific crowds out the general you want to focus on a niche own something right I'm going to be the top
01:14:19
1% of this medium and I'm going to develop domain expertise I'm going to be the person that understands
01:14:25
Ethiopian cuisine and I'm going to bring romance and make people feel something and I'm going to connect it to family
01:14:31
and I'm going to connect it to African culture and I'm going to connect it to maternal love and whatever it is but
01:14:37
think about it what emotions do you want people to feel and then every day it's just hand toand combat every day you
01:14:45
know before we were off mic you said we were both kind of in the last two years both of our careers have sort of hit a
01:14:50
Tipping Point I feel like I've worked my ass off for 35 years and all of a sudden went over of success and you said what
01:14:57
was the one thing and I can't point to any one thing it was a series of little things it's kind of the Mr Beast secret
01:15:04
sauce it's iteration every day they test things they make things just a tiny bit
01:15:09
better so commit to Excellence you put out a podcast you put out a medium post
01:15:14
you put out a PowerPoint presentation about AI whatever it is try and find a mechanism for feedback and commit to
01:15:20
just being a little bit better the next time you do it I'm going to let you in on a little secret what is in the Diary
01:15:28
of a CO Cup this cup that sits in front of me when I interview these people sometimes for 3 hours and sometimes
01:15:33
three people a day and the answer is this perfect dead I invested in the company on Dragon's dead and since then
01:15:39
they've gone from an idea to the fastest growing energy drink in the UK it is a
01:15:45
mature energy drink and it is absolutely delicious but that's not why I choose to drink it on this podcast the reason I
01:15:51
choose to drink it is because it gives me what I call all day energy I don't get the same crashes that I used to get
01:15:57
with other energy drinks if you're in the middle of a conversation or you're in the middle of a talk on stage or in the boardroom the last thing you want to
01:16:02
do is have a crash you don't want Jitters and you need focus and that is
01:16:08
why they now sponsor this podcast not only is it delicious but it gives me a significant competitive Advantage if you
01:16:14
haven't tried it go down to a Tesco go to a waitrose or go online and use the code diary 10 at checkout and you'll get
01:16:21
10% off and when you do try it let me know how you get on I'm very keen to understand how you
01:16:27
invest your money so say I'm that I'm working at McDonald's like or Burger King or whatever and I say these places not to sort of diminish the the value of
01:16:34
the work but because I worked four five years of my life in places like call centers and the McDonald's Etc but just
01:16:40
as that's the jumpoff point for many people I get up to managerial position I have a little bit of disposable income
01:16:45
now should I be going all in on crypto or my friend has this company he said it's going to work should I be betting
01:16:51
my money there over the a long-term time Horizon where have you invested your money made the most returns and why should I well just do as I say not as I
01:16:59
do I always went all in on things and when you go all in on something if it hits the ground or blows up you're kind
01:17:05
of done and you don't have any capital and you can end up I ended up broke it
01:17:10
in 99 I was looking at Jets by 2000 after the do bomb implosion I was broke
01:17:16
crawled my way back was wealthy Again by 2007 all in on Tech by the end of 2008 I
01:17:22
was broke again and what I Le learned since then is I've crawled my way back gotten very lucky the markets have
01:17:29
boomed but now I diversify like crazy what does diversify mean you're never
01:17:35
more than a certain amount of your net worth in any one thing and you try and make sure those things aren't correlated
01:17:42
to each other it's harder when you're young because you may have to go all in on a house you may have to put every penny you have to buy your first home
01:17:49
when you start a business when you're young you don't have the luxury diversifying you have to I bet you kind of went all in on this business business
01:17:55
at some point But as soon as you have the opportunity to
01:18:00
diversify I'm about to put money in an aircraft maintenance company in El
01:18:05
Salvador I love it it's totally different than anything I do that way if my world goes to [ __ ] again in Tech I
01:18:14
have someone making money fixing planes in El Salvador I do a bunch of just
01:18:19
different weird businesses that aren't related because over time because demographics and Technology productivity
01:18:27
does grow up in our economy and the markets go up the best advice I can give any young person in terms of the actual
01:18:33
investment is a lowcost ETF you don't want fees to eat up you don't want a day trade 80 to 95% of people who day trade
01:18:41
lose money you want to be in a lowcost diversified um ETF what's an ETF
01:18:47
exchange traded fund so they basically say okay we're going to create a synthetic of the entire market and all
01:18:54
health heare stocks so like I could I can invest in a tech ETF or a solar ETF
01:18:59
or or I don't know AI ETF let me make it easy go to Vanguard and I don't have a
01:19:06
relationship with Vanguard spy that's the index that tracks the S&P 500 and so
01:19:12
people the email I get most is from young men looking for guidance and mothers looking for guidance for their
01:19:17
for their sons the second most frequent email is the following is it too late to
01:19:22
invest in Nvidia and the honest answer is I don't know I can imagine a scenario where it gets cut
01:19:28
by 80% I can imagine a scenario where it triples so this is what you do you invest in spy because about 20% on the
01:19:36
dollar will go into the Magnificent 7 because they're about 20% of the market cap of the S&P spy is again a basket of
01:19:43
different stocks it's it's a index fund that mimics the SNP so they're 500
01:19:49
companies in the S&P Nvidia is probably 3 or 5% of the total value of the S&P so
01:19:54
5 cents on your dollar goes into Nvidia right about 20% is that right 24 25% is
01:20:01
the Magnificent 7 the tech companies we talk about 25 cents on your dollar will go to them so assume those companies
01:20:08
double great you participate but assume the other 493 companies finally get their time in the Sun and those
01:20:14
companies go down a half you're still fine you're still fine again you don't need to find the needle and the Hy stack
01:20:21
and stop believing in a very American way that you can figure it out I of the brightest people in finance and what the
01:20:29
the my net conclusion is that none of them have any [ __ ] idea some have a
01:20:35
little bit more of an idea but if you look at the entire alternative Investments industry hedge funds private
01:20:42
Equity Funds mutual funds anyone on CNBC if you took all of their returns and
01:20:49
aggregate they are less than the S&P by the amount of their fees it's one of the greatest griffs in the modern economy is
01:20:55
believing that some guy who looks old and unhappy and has suspenders and went to Harvard knows more about the markets
01:21:02
than you all you need to know is diversification right
01:21:08
spy start saving young and then the next best piece of advice is if you
01:21:14
can if you can force savings 98% of us
01:21:19
will spend everything we get our hands on it is very hard to have the discipline to take money that is within
01:21:25
your grasp and invest it for Savings Plan find out at work if they have profit sharing or IRAs or rth whatever
01:21:34
the the I forget what it's called here where if you put some money aside the government matches it pensions well not
01:21:40
only pensions but there's something here I forget what it's called if you save 5,000 PS through your work the government I think will match it uh put
01:21:46
in a th000 pounds there's all sorts of saving schemes that work acorns the apps
01:21:52
that round up to the nearest dollar and then immed immediately shoot it into spy try as hard as you can to put yourself
01:21:58
in a position where you invest despite your best efforts not to because the
01:22:04
majority of us will get that money and go buy a flat screen TV and when you're saying investing I think because it can
01:22:10
sometimes sound complicated from someone that's so far away from it there's apps on our phones now where we can in a
01:22:15
couple of minutes invest in the exact thing you've just said from we can make an account in a couple of minutes and
01:22:21
probably ask for our passport take a photo of our passport there's so many different apps where you can go in and invest in the S&P 500 you don't need to
01:22:27
call someone or know someone and you can invest what's the minimum you can invest $50 go to public.com you I mean start
01:22:35
with a basic a basic lowcost ETF or Index Fund s Spy if you want to get take
01:22:41
a little bit more risk and you want to be in Tech there's all sorts of ETFs and index funds around Tech you're gonna
01:22:48
every young person especially young man is under the impression they're smarter than they are and that they can beat the market so okay take 30 % of your money
01:22:55
have some fun buy Starbucks Nvidia Unilever Nova Nordisk whatever you think
01:23:01
you have insight into so you can learn a life lesson that over the long term you don't know what you're doing and just
01:23:07
put it in an index fund because the marvelous thing about the human race is we become more productive and the Western economies generally speaking
01:23:13
over the medium and long term are up and to the right and again and I'll go back to my algorithm or equation Focus find
01:23:22
something you could be good at maybe great that has a 90 plus percent employment rate stoicism we haven't
01:23:27
talked about that realize there's some things you can't control focus on the things you can control one thing that is
01:23:33
within your control is spending try and find a partner try and gamify spending I
01:23:38
spent $78 a week my summer between my Junior and Senior year including rent because I needed $3,300 to go back to
01:23:45
school I partnered with five other guys in my fraternity and we gamified who could spend the least amount of money
01:23:50
find a partner who's aligned with you around spending and saving right realize
01:23:56
no one's as impressed or thinking about your [ __ ] as much as you are right find try and find reward from exercise from
01:24:02
relationships not from signaling wealth with kind of stupid [ __ ] right I call
01:24:08
that stoicism it's really more about discipline develop a savings muscle one an appreciation for time and how fast
01:24:14
it's going to go I was stupid I remember my best friend Lee Lotus picking me up to go to the beach when I was in college
01:24:20
and he was scrambling to find $2,000 to put it into something called an IRA Roth where his company a bank he was working
01:24:26
for he was just out of college if he found $2,000 they would match it with another 2,000 I thought I said to him
01:24:32
these exact words if 2,000 bucks means anything to me when I'm older shoot me I
01:24:38
have made so much more much more money than Lee Lotus and he is a multi-millionaire now so am I but I've
01:24:45
endured a lot more risk and a lot more ups and downs because he was that lame guy scraping together $2,000 when he was
01:24:52
23 I went out spent my first bonus check at Morgan Stanley I got $28,000 my first
01:24:57
year out of college Morgan Stanley $28,000 check I go out and I buy a $35,000 BMWs hung swim goggles from the
01:25:05
rearview mirror thinking that would impress people I don't know what I was doing I figured out if I had bought a Hyundai for 9,000 bucks which you could
01:25:12
get in 1987 or whatever it is and invested the other 20 in spy never
01:25:18
looked at again I would have enough money now to buy 11 Ferraris including that new electric Ferrari that for some
01:25:24
reason appeals to me which makes no sense an electric Ferrari anyways you're going to love this I tell the people
01:25:29
that work for me that I drive up in a Ferrari and I say if you work really hard someday someday I'll have two
01:25:34
Ferraris anyway I don't have a Ferrari by the way
01:25:40
my other joke about a Ferrari is Ferrar is like having a long consistent erection I don't have a Ferrari
01:25:47
anyways anyways but where were we going realize people aren't as impressed with
01:25:52
your [ __ ] as you are recog the power of time and then the thing where I really screwed up Stephen
01:25:58
diversification take some money off the table invest and I'm hearing from employees in Nvidia we talked about this
01:26:06
diversify you get it's such a bulletproof Kevlar for your mental
01:26:11
health you get risk-free return nobody knows anything can happen Amazon 1999
01:26:18
again lost 90% of its value do you know the kind of mental anguish when you go into a stock like Amazon and you lose
01:26:25
90% of your of your Investments so if you want to have some fun ring fence it
01:26:31
to 30% of your of your savings pick some stuff and it'll be a good life lesson
01:26:36
for you you may get lucky more power to you over time you're going to realize
01:26:41
nothing beats over the long term Warren Buffett what the third wealthiest man on the world I'm giving you the same answer
01:26:47
he gives if someone has 10,000 bucks out of the invest and he's like lowcost index funds it's a two and a half hour
01:26:57
conversation concludes it put it in thep 500 cost index one I
01:27:04
know it's it's the boring [ __ ] that makes you rich yeah it's also I buys a lot of Cs it's the boring incremental
01:27:10
stuff to move shareholder value MH no it's so true so one of the things that
01:27:15
stopped me when I was young from doing exactly what you just said is I didn't think that the $500 I had or the £500
01:27:22
that I had was enough to get get started so I said to myself in my head I thought okay when I get a million I'll become an investor and I think a lot of people
01:27:29
actually listen to these kind of conversations and go okay once I've once I've got £5,000 disposable income a
01:27:35
month then I'll do what Scott said but there's no point in doing it with a small amount of money I wanted to use
01:27:41
this little bucket of sand here as an analogy for this because um my team brought a bucket of sand to illuminate
01:27:48
the power of compounding interest when you invest in these S&P 500 companies and this glass represents investing
01:27:54
1,000 a month in the S&P 500 over the course of 12 months starting at the age of 25 right but if you left it and kept
01:28:02
investing at that rate by the age of 65 it would look like this you have Zuma Beach
01:28:10
Z oh my God thank God that's you Jesus
01:28:15
Christ it would look like that and this is really what you're
01:28:20
saying when you're talking about ETFs well you you asked that question about the young man who says I'm going to wait
01:28:26
till I get I have 500 pounds I'm going to wait till I have a million before I start investing the way you get a million pounds is by investing that 500
01:28:33
we don't believe we're going to get old we don't recognize how fast time is going to go we don't appreciate the power of compound interest don't focus
01:28:41
on your Investments put it in lowcost low energy ETFs start early you have
01:28:48
time your advantage when you're young is time and you're going to get that bucket of sand by the way this right here isn't
01:28:54
a lesson in investing this is a lesson in storytelling a bucket of sand I mean
01:28:59
who thinks of this move it out the way no but it is it
01:29:05
is I've I um I discovered the art in the science of compounding interest too late
01:29:11
in my life and I just wish someone had slapped me in the face with it at 18 yeah it's crazy honestly I probably
01:29:18
started at 28 that's still earlier than most people but it goes to the notion of back to the advice for young person most
01:29:25
young people don't have the discipline to invest any money they get their hands on because a capitalist economy is the
01:29:32
the smartest people in the world with the most god-like technology are presenting you with amazing irresistible
01:29:37
offers to upgrade from economy to economy Comfort to add to add flowerless chocolate cake to your order from
01:29:44
baltazar balerie in one minute or less I'm like oh my god oh wait there's three other people looking at this room this
01:29:50
hotel room and it's going on sale and I better it's so difficult to hold on to
01:29:56
any money you want to find ways of force savings a house is force savings to a certain extent because people don't want
01:30:01
to be evicted from their house going to work for a company and getting options and getting Equity the gross tax
01:30:06
deferred that sort of force savings but you want to as a young person try and find as many ways as possible to have
01:30:13
Force savings an app that that rounds up to the nearest dollar and then invests
01:30:19
no matter what that is for savings it is very difficult to take money that is in
01:30:24
ever comes through your hands and invest it so find for savings mechanisms that are taken out of your check find out if
01:30:32
your company offers any sort of investment or saving schemes that they match or that the government matches and
01:30:38
most corporations offer Something Real Estate I've had a lot of guests talk to
01:30:44
me like Morgan howel and others that have a sort of mixed view on whether real estate is a good
01:30:49
investment what's your thoughts on it should I be investing in real estate well you know my brother said to me when I was 25 he said Steve if everybody is
01:30:58
playing the game the returns probably aren't great from it goes back to sex appeal too much Capital going
01:31:05
in look Cas Schiller the brightest people in real estate will say if you really account for maintenance and
01:31:11
upkeep that real estate has not outperformed other asset classes the reason I like real estate is that one in
01:31:18
the United States is very tax advantag there are very few asset classes you can lever up 4 to one 20% % down payment I
01:31:26
can't buy Apple I can't buy $100 worth of Apple stock for 20 bucks so it's it's
01:31:31
huge leverage the interest on that is tax deductible in addition if you sell a
01:31:36
home this is true in the US I don't in the US uh I don't know in the UK if you buy a home and sell it after hold on to
01:31:42
it for at least two years you get a $250,000 tax deduction 500,000 for married so if you have for example any
01:31:50
ability get to know the the homes in your area find a nice home or a rental unit that
01:31:57
you can maybe rent out or or upgrade maybe you're handy to do that every few
01:32:02
years and take advantage of the tax deduction and then roll into something bigger and that is for savings you know
01:32:09
that mortgage payment is coming every month actually the majority of savings for Baby Boomers right now is in their
01:32:16
homes it's the equity in their homes now unfortunately that's there's some bad things we haven't improved housing permits as quickly as we should which is
01:32:23
made it more expensive for entrance young people can't afford homes the average hes gone from 290 to 420 through
01:32:29
the pandemic in the US and if you look at interest rates it means the average mortgage payments gone from $1,100 to
01:32:35
$2,300 so it used to be two-thirds of America could afford a home now it's onethird I I whole other talk show but I
01:32:41
just did a Ted Talk on the war on the young economically but real estate is a very tax advantage industry it is for
01:32:48
savings also there is some I think psychic value which I think is important to to a home you start investing in it
01:32:55
fixing it up it feels like I don't know it's just there's something rewarding about it but to what your brother said
01:33:01
when everyone's trying to buy homes in an area that usually means it's probably getting overvalued and like any other
01:33:07
asset class uh it can lose money but the reason I like it is because it is a form
01:33:13
of force savings people generally speaking will make that mortgage payment or try and figure out way now you want
01:33:19
to make sure that not more than 40% of your income goes into into a house
01:33:24
otherwise it's just going to be your anchor it's just going to be a source of stress for you and I think a lot of
01:33:29
people grow up thinking I have to have a home and so they just become over levered in their home and they become
01:33:35
kind of house poor they own a house and that's it and they can't afford to do anything else and they might not be able to able to move then and you talked
01:33:41
about geographical opportunity when you're young that's right you get tied you get tied down especially if your home goes down in value but I still
01:33:47
think it's a in the US at least real estate's the most tax advantage and if you own commercial real estate in the US
01:33:53
you can depreciate It 2 or 3% a year you can't depreciate a stock 2 or 3% a year is there someone that should and
01:33:59
shouldn't buy a home then in your view is there a certain demographic or age or person with a certain talent that shouldn't shouldn't buy a home I would
01:34:06
say in general if it's a home if you think that you're not going to be able to hold on to it for at least seven years if you hold on to a home for seven
01:34:12
years you should be able to write out most economic Cycles or a economic down
01:34:18
cycle um I think there's some wonderful things about renting you can slam your keys down and leave if you're planning to move
01:34:24
move um if you don't have somewhat reliable sources of income um a morgage
01:34:32
is probably a tough thing I don't know I think I think home ownership I'm talking my own book a
01:34:37
little bit here because I've made good money in real estate I've really enjoyed it but I think it's situational and it
01:34:42
goes back to that notion of having a kitchen cabinet of people who can advise you on on on that asset class
01:34:48
unfortunately that asset class has become so expensive that the quote unquote American dream of owning home has become
01:34:54
somewhat of a hallucination if you will or a fantasy for a lot of young people the other thing I I came to learn is I
01:35:00
got money and I it was almost like someone pulled a curtain back for me is how wealthy
01:35:07
individuals play the tax game oh my gosh and it's a tax game that the average person has no idea what's going on got
01:35:13
to talk about money tax avoidance is a key skill to Building Wealth and by the
01:35:19
way we don't talk about I I speak openly about my I won't call it tax avoidance
01:35:24
but my Tax Strategies if you're you know it's like they said if you're a prison of War you have an obligation to escape
01:35:30
if you're trying to build wealth you have an obligation to pay as little tax as possible do it legally but Apple will
01:35:36
issue their IP to Apple International in Ireland and then they will use apple
01:35:42
Ireland they will license their IP to America charart them tens of billions of dollars thereby increasing the income of
01:35:49
Apple Ireland at a lower tax rate and decreasing the income in the us thereby
01:35:54
lowering their overall tax rate that is pure tax avoidance every organization every
01:36:02
corporation does this to the hilt and so should you by the way I will vote for
01:36:08
people who have an alternative minimum tax we have to raise taxes on corporations the 25 wealthiest Americans
01:36:14
pay between 6 and 8% tax rate what are the tax games they're playing oh this
01:36:20
the rich people there's a bunch of them first and foremost it's you buy stocks you never sell them you borrow against
01:36:26
them okay explain that to me like I'm a 10-year-old so sure you own $100 an Amazon stock yeah you need money to buy
01:36:32
something instead of selling the stock and it say it's gone up 50% say it's doubled you would have to realize a
01:36:38
capital gain and pay long-term capital gains on that $50 gain no just borrow against it and let the stock continue to
01:36:46
grow and you pay a little bit of Interest hopefully from your current income but basically it's invest borrow
01:36:52
against it and die put it into a a trust and then pass it on to your kids there's a lot of um
01:37:00
State Arbitrage Jeff Bezos just moved to Florida to spend more time with Dad isn't that sweet Stephen isn't that nice
01:37:07
no it has nothing to do with his father give me a [ __ ] break he aggregated $160 billion in wealth he would pay
01:37:14
about another eight or 10% in state taxes in Washington because he's got to leverage the public school system the
01:37:19
University of Washington the Seattle Tacoma Airport the hospital system but in the US you're allowed to pece out to
01:37:24
Texas or Florida and pay no income tax so all the people [ __ ] Post in
01:37:29
California or New York show me someone who's CR all of a sudden can't handle San Francisco politics I'm going to show
01:37:35
you someone who needs to recognize a capital gain and has all of a sudden decided they like Texas politics it's
01:37:40
really not very it's very disingenuous there's uh the tax loophole I've
01:37:46
leveraged in the US there's something called 122 or qualified small business so when I started L2 what's L2 L2 is my
01:37:54
analytics company I started it I invested a small amount of money um uh
01:38:00
because it was a business worth less than 50 million your business would qualify in the US as qsb small business
01:38:07
if you hold on to that stock in that company for longer than 5 years when you sell it the first 10 million or 10 times
01:38:14
the basis are taxfree so the first 10 million out of L2 was tax-free
01:38:20
zero that makes no sense if that sounds like we're screwing the middle class trust your instincts I invested in a
01:38:27
company brought a company out of bankruptcy I invested 2 and a half million the first 25 million got very
01:38:34
lucky the company got sold for a lot of money the first 25 million were tax-free these are the tax code has gone from 400
01:38:40
pages to 4,000 and that extra 3600 pages are to turn rich people into super rich
01:38:46
people now the myth around taxes is the following that rich people don't pay their taxes
01:38:52
actually the sort of Rich pay a disproportionate amount of taxes so if you make all of your money from current
01:38:58
income that is salary and you make a lot you're actually paying more taxes than anyone so mom's a baller she's a partner
01:39:05
in a prestigious Law Firm making a million bucks a year dad's a chiropractor has three people working
01:39:11
for him he makes 600 $1.6 million a year total ballers in order to make that kind
01:39:17
of money they probably have to live in a urban center in a blue state where at that level they're paying 4 5 48
01:39:24
sometimes 52% tax rates but if dad decides to raise capital and buy a bunch
01:39:31
of chiropractic clinics and they become Investments and he sells them for $50 million is tax rate plummets so you
01:39:39
don't want to be a super earner you want to earn enough money to invest so you can become a super owner the top 25
01:39:46
wealthiest Americans pay about 8% in tax right so actually the bottom half pay
01:39:53
almost sow tax they pay a lot of consumption taxes but it's the super earners that get screwed what I call the
01:39:59
workhorses but once you makes the jump to light speed and you own things and you make your money from buying and
01:40:05
selling assets your tax rate plummets the really sort of actionable thing
01:40:10
there for the average person as well is probably the the first point where you said a lot of what rich people do is
01:40:16
they'll buy a stock so I'll I'll spend 10K on Amazon stock and then I go to a
01:40:21
bank and the bank give me A5 ,000 loan against my Amazon stock taxfree and I
01:40:27
just hold the Amazon stock now I've got 5,000 taxfree if the Amazon stock goes to TW $20,000 in value then I can I can
01:40:34
go to the bank and say it's gone up now give me another $5,000 and I just spend and live off that money now if the Amazon stock
01:40:41
collapses I'm fine because the loan was against the stock so they'll sell the stock at a certain point as it's
01:40:46
collapsing to get their money back yeah I mean you don't want to get into too much trouble but it leverages how smart
01:40:52
people go broke but the idea is that one of the great tax schemes in history is
01:40:58
that stocks grow think of yourself as a stock you you go up in value a million
01:41:04
bucks a year you're making a million dollars a year doing a very successful podcast every year the government in the
01:41:10
UK is going to take 40 cents of that 40% of it if you own a million dollars in stock and it goes to two million you
01:41:18
don't get taxed on it till you sell it yeah so just never sell it never sell it and that's what elon's doing with his
01:41:23
compan people say he's got you know $200 billion whatever in fact he's borrowing taxfree against those companies and then
01:41:29
when he finally needs to sell it to pay off some of those loans he moves to Texas despite the fact he built all his
01:41:34
wealth in California smart I think one of the great advantages of life is um as it
01:41:40
relates to wealth creation is really getting good tax advice because I've sat here over and over again with people
01:41:45
that have great tax advice and some people who didn't have any at all and the outcomes are quite frankly um
01:41:51
shocking the variance and outcomes are quite quite frankly shocking from one person going bankrupt to the other person becoming a multi-billionaire and
01:41:57
it comes down to some of it comes down to their tax strategy and how they thought about tax and have you know
01:42:03
being around a lot of people now that are Masters in tax it was like yeah I
01:42:08
describe it as someone pulled back a curtain that I never knew was there and all these people were doing magic behind this curtain and no one ever told me
01:42:14
that curtain existed and it's called tax we don't all pay the same tax because we're not supposed to talk about it
01:42:19
again not talking about it is rich people trying to keep poor people down yeah because rich people talk about their taxes all the time brightest woman
01:42:25
in my entire professional universe is a woman named Lucy Lee who is my tax Yoda who works at a big Law Firm that I pay
01:42:32
1,800 bucks an hour to to figure out the smartest when I set up a company I talk
01:42:37
to my tax person when I'm about to get a big payment from my podcast Distribution Company I talked to my tax person first
01:42:44
this is it is everything but the key when you're young is to become an owner
01:42:50
not an earner you're an earner you want to buy has to move out of earning and develop an army of capital that goes out
01:42:56
and kills for you at Night 500 bucks is a lot of money when you're 21 500 bucks
01:43:02
when you're 21 is 10,000 when you're my age right and it's going to go really fast so just start and then once you
01:43:10
become a super owner you have 10,000 50,000 100,000 a million dollars in
01:43:15
assets then then you can become a super tax avoider
01:43:29
that sounded awful that sounded awful that sounded
01:43:35
awful sitting here with your bucket of sand oh my God a bunch of that's right
01:43:43
talking about this is how we [ __ ] the middle class this is how we really screw
01:43:48
over the little guy we have a we have a closing tradition on this
01:43:54
podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest not knowing who they're leaving it for what is the last thing you learned
01:44:02
how to do just because you wanted to learn how to do it that's really
01:44:09
interesting um you know it sounds this is going to
01:44:14
sound so trite but my boys and I are you know when you get when you're
01:44:21
dad you you you if you're an egomaniac like me I just assume my kids were going
01:44:28
to be super into World War II history and Crossfit because I thought oh they would think I was such a hero that
01:44:34
they'd get well you realize if you want to be a good dad you have to be engaged in what your kids are engaged in
01:44:40
otherwise you're just not going to engage I have no interest in sports I have become a massive fan of Premier
01:44:48
League football because my kids are so devoted to Chelsea and to Tottenham so
01:44:54
I've taken up Arsenal so we could have a lot of fights in the house but what have I learned I've learned to love football
01:45:01
and the moment my sons are out of the house I will learn to not care about it again so I've learned to love Premier
01:45:07
League football because it's a way I engage with my boys well next year we'll go yeah I'm a Manchester United fan so
01:45:13
man you how [ __ ] predictable literally man you you're such AER You're
01:45:20
such AIT you you grew up Manchester right half my family did so half my
01:45:25
siblings were born there yeah yeah the only thing would worse than that would have been man city but you have okay you have man you wres then if you're from
01:45:32
manchest I have to tell people this they're like because you get roasted and then you have to indicate that the like
01:45:37
for me the first place we lived in the UK was Manchester so my older siblings were all born there and then we moved to Devon in the southwest which Countryside
01:45:44
but one of the strongest brands in the world my my 16-year-old son has a friend coming they're going to take the train
01:45:50
up just to do a tour of the stadium oh really how many many times do you do that when are they coming oh I think
01:45:56
it's in a few weeks we're going but I mean we're going to Germany for the European championships World Cup our
01:46:01
whole family our activity is we explore Europe we follow uh we go you know see
01:46:07
FC Barcelona play I mean this is a position of privilege but football for us when I stopped playing sports as a
01:46:15
college student I didn't think about sports again for 25 years and now we're just all in on foot we plan our lives
01:46:22
not not around football football but every week we go to a game it's wonderful I'm convinced it's one of the few safe places that men can demonstrate
01:46:28
emotion yeah it's one of the few places men are allowed to hug each other feel sad feel Joy 100% but it's I've been to
01:46:36
because I'm in the corporate world amazing sporting event the best sporting events in the world the Olympics the Super Bowl nothing matches Premier
01:46:43
League football nothing it really is special that's what I learned to do hey
01:46:48
man was super interesting because um I've read in your work about like buying people buying football clubs and stuff
01:46:54
like that and they're never going to make money but the the asset is basically valuable because someone else wants to buy offer Theory and I'm
01:46:59
getting loads of those offers now to like get involved in football clubs and stuff and and actually based on your thesis about men yeah it is act for me
01:47:08
there's there is a thesis there well the thesis is that there's the real thesis
01:47:13
is that the number of billionaires in the US has gone from 500 to 2500 they're men who are in a massive midlife
01:47:19
crisis the way to become the most interesting person in Cleveland is to buy the Cavaliers of the Browns
01:47:25
overnight you're the sexist man in Cleveland if you worth $50 billion why wouldn't you spend 5 billion to why buy
01:47:31
the Washington commanders or you know to buy I think tottenham's up for sale right now I thought I got together the
01:47:38
wealthiest most famous Scottish people in the US which is about 14 of us and said let's go buy Rangers rangers FC
01:47:48
it's a publicly traded company I had it all figured out 10 million pound convertible note I'm like we
01:47:53
and then guy my friend of mine's a famous historian of Scottish is like you'd be the most hated person in the United Kingdom he was they would hate
01:48:00
you you knew nothing about football you'd be some American Idiot over there
01:48:05
and I'm like yeah you're right he's like just go to Rangers games it's like what are you thinking yeah there's a pain
01:48:11
equation with buying sports teams because you're buying a tribe yeah and the chances are you won't win most of
01:48:18
the time and then you have to deal with like Dave from I don't know Southampton whose entire life is that football club
01:48:24
that you've just bought and he is pissed and unless you win trophies from day one you've screwed up and who does yeah
01:48:29
nobody so it's a horrible pain sport anyways SC we're
01:48:35
done I am a big Manchester United fan and I travel all over the world one of the big lifes savers for me as someone
01:48:40
that never misses a game ever regardless of where I am in the world is nordvpn because nordvpn allows me to watch the
01:48:46
game in territories and in countries where it's often not available for a variety of different reasons but it's not just about football it's websites
01:48:53
movies that I can access and it helps me navigate those geographical blockers and that's why nordvpn are both a sponsor of
01:48:59
this podcast but a lifesaver for me and it costs the same as a cup of coffee per month and not just that when I'm
01:49:04
accessing Wi-Fi networks around the world it gives me a lot of security which is something that I think we don't
01:49:10
think about enough if you want to check out nordvpn for a limited time only head to nordvpn.com
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a huge discount plus four extra months when you sign up to a 2-year Plan and
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there's no risk with nord's 30-day money back guarantee so give it a try that's nordvpn.com doac or check out the episode
01:49:34
description link below [Music]
01:49:52
a [Music]
