Scott Galloway: Do This In Your 20s To Make Millions In Your 30s

I wanted to be an athlete. That was my passion. And then I'm going to UCLA was a blessing because I figured out pretty quickly that I wasn't in the 0.1% you need to be in to make your living as an athlete. And there's a fair— there's some pretty basic axioms that should guide your career choices around where you invest your most precious capital, and that is your time, your human capital. The first is The sexier the business, the lower return on investment. You want to be in fashion, the arts, movies, modeling, sports. Unless you get really, you know, incandescent green lights from a very early age that you're going to be in the 0.1%, try and make a living somewhere else and then do that on the weekends. And that is, if you The SAG-AFTRA, the most talented actors in the world. It's hard to get a SAG-AFTRA union card. You have to actually be in something. These are the most talented actors in the world, 182,000 of them. 87% of them don't qualify for health insurance 'cause they don't make more than $23,000 in a given year. So the key is finding, not finding your passion, but finding your talent and then committing to developing mastery. And if you can develop mastery in anything that has a 90+ employment rate, which 98% of sectors enjoy, the economic accoutrements, the camaraderie, the prestige, the relevance, just the sheer joy of mastery will make you passionate about whatever it is. And I'm passionate about taking care of my kids. I'm passionate about being able to step in and help my aging father. I'm passionate about— I'd rather be Rafael Nadal or Federer, but kind of, I'd rather be me than the number 3 or number 4 tennis player in the world because I have financial security. I get to go to Wimbledon on my own terms and not be as nervous and not throw up or, before a match. So yeah, I'd rather be Nadal, but pretty much anyone else playing tennis, I'd rather be. And I got there with boring companies. So the less sexy a business, the higher the return on investment. So I would suggest that we stop, you know, think about, well, what could I be good at? I think that's what your 20s are for, workshopping stuff and also getting it wrong. I started in investment banking and I was terrible at it. I didn't like them, they didn't like me. And I had to go back to business school and just start workshopping. Where could I be great? What industry could I be great in? So don't, you know, find what you're good at and then get great at it and then be a DJ on the weekends.

Well, so I mean, the, the book, from my understanding, is that it basically talks about the people who have money and the people who don't, and what are the commonalities between the winners and the losers. And you have— I've read this for years. There was this awesome Fast Company article about you And I've seen you say this in videos where you were shockingly calculating when starting your last company, L2. I think you said something like, uh, Deloitte did a study. They did a study that shows what's the difference between the people who sell their companies for 5 to 10 times revenue versus those who just sell it for 1 or 2 times. And you had these like 4 or 5 things and it was, uh, they own a niche, they have recurring revenue, tech is at their core, and that they're international. And then finally they have defensive IP. And then you went on and said how like in your 40s when you were starting L2, 40s and 50s, you were like only focused on money. You said, I worked my ass off. I was there at the office at 2 AM. You said, uh, but I don't regret it. You said it was totally worth it. And when you were starting L2, I don't really know too much about that industry or that business other than a handful of articles. Were you that calculating with working backwards from an exit? And by the way, the story ends with you selling it for $120 million.

160, boss. Jesus, get your facts straight. And by the way, I'm number one on Amazon today. I don't know if I told you that. Um, yeah, I, I, I didn't have a lot of money, and for me, work was about getting economic security. I was very focused on money, and I'm not saying that's the right way, it was just my way. And I had done a lot of analysis, and the study referring to said, okay, there are companies that sell in any industry, they, you know, the lowest 10 percentile, the upper decile of the valuations they get taken out at. And this study looked at the common features of the companies that got sold in the top decile. And it was all the things you talked about. And that's literally how I shaped the business model. I opened a London office right away. I, instead of charging consulting fees, I said, pay me a quarter of a million bucks a year and I'll answer your toughest questions using data. We focused on luxury. And then consumer brands. We broadened our niche a little bit. We spent— I raised $17 million to create a series of technology and scraping tools such that I could collect more data points than anyone in the world, such that when the inevitable guy from the analytics department came in with his arms crossed to play gotcha, um, they just couldn't argue with our data. We just collected more data than anyone in the world on these issues and tried to distill it down to something actionable. So I was very focused on exit. And we sold for 8 times revenue. So yeah, man, my basic pitch to people was, you're gonna work your ass off and I'm gonna try and get you to, you know, I'm gonna try and get you to where your parents were 20 years earlier. And if you're looking for balance, this isn't that place. If you're really into management or other things, tell me and I will try and like shape a role around what's important to you., but we are a small business going all in to try and create economic security for us and our families. Yeah. With Prop Team Media, we're about 14 people now. I purposely didn't take outside capital. I'm not on that hamster wheel again. I'm not trying to Jones for an exit. I'm trying to build something interesting that has relevance, that has a little bit more impact on the social issues we think about, and also pay our people really well. I used to pay people below market and give them equity, and I was throwing nickels around like they were manhole covers 'cause I wanted to have a profitable company I could sell. Now my priorities have changed and the people who join the company, I tell them this isn't the kind of company that gets sold, but what I'll do is I'll share, I'll give you equity or participation in my book deals. You know, you are a junior analyst, you get 1 or 2% of any book deal I get. You get, you know, try and create some economic upside for them. My natural starting point is that people come to work to develop economic security for them and their families, to increase their currency, their currency in the marketplace experience, and also to develop relationships. The workplace is a great place to meet friends, mentors, additional, you know, co-founders. And we spend a lot of money on— we saved with COVID we gave up our office. We save about $800,000 or $900,000 a year on an office. 'Cause of course, as a narcissist, I had to have this amazing office in SoHo, which was stupid. And I have this rule at work, or not this rule, but this benefit. If any 4 of them are together, they get my credit card. They can go to Broadway or they can go to Tulum, and they've done those things without asking my permission. As long as there's 4 of 'em, they got my credit card. And the number 1 source of retention, I think the key to building a small business is retention. Because if you find good people, you just don't want them to be with you a year or 2 years and go to Google. 'Cause the switching costs are enormous. And if you find someone good, your job as an entrepreneur or the CEO is just to create an environment where they wanna stick. Retention of employees is, in my opinion, is just huge. And I find, or I read a study, another study on this, and it said the number one source of retention or the number one lever for retention, people think it's compensation, people think it's culture, it's whether or not that person has a friend at work. If they have a friend at work, they look forward to going to work. And they are less likely to leave. And so what I try and do, everybody interviews everybody when we hire people, but these kids, it's really inspiring. They'll go, like 6 of them will go on vacation together. They'll say, oh Scott, you're speaking in Hamburg, Germany. All 6 of us are gonna come. And they have a great time together. They like each other. And it's really, it's a powerful kind of business weapon, if you will. Now I don't think you can do that when as a company scales, beyond 50, 100 people. Um, but I found for a small business it's really powerful.

Sure.

Yeah. Investment banking, no good at it. Business school, started a brand strategy firm called Profit, grew it to a couple hundred people, sold it for $33 million. What do I want to do? I know I want to teach. The dot-com implosion took me to, you know, from what I thought was being wealthy to not being wealthy. Teaching wasn't gonna help me or help me maintain the lifestyle I needed or wanted to maintain with two young kids in New York. So I needed to find other ways to make money. And I did the hedge fund thing for a while, did boards, and then saw an opportunity in analytics and benchmarking and started that company, I think '09 or '10. And that was my kind of my big win. And the timing is everything. I got swept up into what is the greatest bull market economy in history. '08 to present is probably going to go down as the greatest extended bull market run in history. People don't understand just what an anomaly the last 16 years have been relative to the history of the market. And just as I was coming into my prime income earning years, you know, the winds just just filled up my sails and I caught, you know, I finally got all the moons sort of lined up, if you will. But I've always said, you know, you gotta be humble when things work because a lot of your success isn't your fault. At the same time, I wish I had been more forgiving of myself when things didn't work because I have trouble forgiving myself. I struggle with anger and I, the person I get most angry at is myself. And I have trouble getting past shit. You know, I was on a, I was at a book thing last night and I said something and it just came out wrong. And I'm like sitting in bed and I can't get past that one thing. It went really well, but I can't think that way. I focus on what's wrong. And that would be my advice to people is be humble when you have wins 'cause a lot of it isn't you, but also forgive yourself 'cause, you know, again, a lot of it isn't you.

Well, just for your own mental and emotional health. And Ryan Holiday is kind of my Yoda on stoicism, and he distills it this way: life is not about what happens to you. You can't control that, but you can control how you respond to what happens to you., and I've tried to always remember that, and I have trouble practicing it, but, you know, the, the ultimate stoicism piece of art in modern history or modern media is Brokeback Mountain. If you, you can't fix it, you gotta stand it. And that is try and focus on the things you can control, and you can control your emotions. It's very difficult to control what happens to you. And, you know, just also recognize, and this is more atheism than Stoicism, everyone on this podcast, everyone we know, everyone we care about what they think of us, they're gonna be dead in 100 years. In a blink of the history, nothing you say or do or what anyone else thinks of you is gonna matter for very long. And something that really has helped me when I was embarrassed or I thought I didn't equip myself very well is what you realize is just imagine yourself when someone says or does something stupid, you say, you think to yourself, oh, that was stupid. And then you go back to thinking about yourself and, you know, people aren't thinking about you, your wealth, your failures, your successes as much as you are. And so the key is just trying to be comfortable with yourself and comfortable in your own skin. And not only that, really kind of focus on what your spouse thinks of you. Is your spouse happy? Do you have a good relationship with your kids? Because what Twitter thinks of you really isn't that important. And because I had so much trouble actually footing my emotions to that logical notion, I know it doesn't matter what people on Twitter or the Twitter mob think of me, but I couldn't emotionally separate myself from it. I don't have those skills. So a, a role model of mine is a guy named Sam Harris. He's like, oh, I got off Twitter. I can't handle that. He's like, why don't you get off of Twitter? I'm like, yeah, I can. So I stopped. I'm off of Twitter for the last 9 months and it's been one of the most accretive things to my mental health. And I didn't like to admit this, but I would say 5 or 6 weekends where I just got really bummed out by something, probably 2 or 3 of them started on Twitter. And I thought, why am I on something that's making me on a regular basis upset? And there's an addictive nature to it. I think it must be just— and that's what freaks me out. I can modulate it, you know. Can my 13-year-old son? And not only that, do I even know that he's upset when he goes? We have a rule in my house, our boys aren't allowed to go into their rooms with their phones alone because I think this thing can literally take a teenager, especially a teenager girl, down a rabbit hole and kind of zero to 60 really fast and then start serving her content. Oh, You're worried about dieting? Well, here's extreme dieting tips despite the fact we know you're 5'10", 95 pounds. Oh, you're depressed? Well, here are some videos of people considering suicide. We're gonna normalize it for you. And I don't think parents are really in touch with just how ugly and how fast it gets really ugly. So, you know, I'm trying to be very thoughtful about what it is as a, you know, stoicism, controlling what I can control. And then trying to be in better touch with my emotions and recognize that when you're down, it's more about the chemistry in your head than any legitimate reason to be down. It's, you're gonna look at the end of life, the biggest regrets. My colleague at NYU, Adam Alter, did great research on people who are very near death and palliative care. And their biggest regrets are one, they'd wish they'd stayed in better touch with friends. They wish they'd lived the life they wanted to lead, not the life society or their parents wanted them to lead. But their biggest regret is they wish they'd been less hard on themselves. They wish they'd forgiven themselves. They wish they'd allowed themselves to be happy. And that's kind of been, that's something I've been very focused on. It's like, okay, stop beating yourself up. You're going to be dead soon. Why wouldn't you squeeze as much juice out of this lemon as conceivable and like afford yourself the opportunity to be happy and be sad if you need to be. But I think of stoicism as, again, life isn't about what happens to you, it's how you respond to what happens to you and decide what is in your control. And, you know, try and be good to yourself, try and forgive yourself, and also just try and be humble. You are never more prone to a really big mistake than right after a big win. Because here's the thing, you start thinking you're good at picking stocks. You start thinking you're so skilled at work, it wasn't, that someone senior to you took an interest in you and championed you. You start thinking, oh, I'm great at real estate. I just didn't get lucky and buy a home at the right time. So be, try and just try and ignore the market when the market tells you you're a failure. And this is personal too. You know, there's been moments in my life where I thought, I don't think I'm ever gonna be able to work again. I think I've ruined everything. I don't think I'm ever gonna make a very, very good living. I remember thinking, saying to my partner at the time, let's move to a low-cost neighborhood, a Charlottesville or a Raleigh-Durham. I'm gonna teach, try and write, you know, make decent livings and just have a really nice life. And my partner's like, that's giving up. And I'm like, well, that's not giving up, but I thought this is it. I just need to substantially downgrade my expectations. And I'm, I don't mean to say that that's not a great life. I remember thinking after my divorce, like, I don't think I'm ever gonna have someone who I can share my life with again. I'm like, this just is never gonna happen to me. I'm an unattractive, broken man who's never gonna find like a partner again. I, I believe that for a short time. And I think that it's important that everybody recognize that, you know, you are the answer to a firm's problem. You can find someone who you can love and is gonna love you a great deal. The key is getting up, putting yourself in a place of success, getting out of the house, being friendly, being risk aggressive, surrounding yourself with people and exercise and nutrition that makes you feel good about yourself such that when the winds kick up again, your sails are up. And I've always tried to do that. I'm, I've had a lot of failure, but I always had my sails up such that when the winds kicked up again, I was in a position to to rumble, so to speak. 'Cause I have a lot, I know a lot of people who are very successful and then they hit some failure, a personal failure, a death of a parent they can't quite get over, a divorce, a company that fails, and they get stuck. They can't forgive themselves, they can't forgive others, they can't forgive the market, or they don't, they lose their mojo, whatever it is. And 2, 3, 5 years, 7 years goes on and they just haven't progressed. And they start— their skills start atrophying, their confidence starts atrophying. So what I say is put a statute of limit— whenever anything happened bad happens to you, you got to put a statute of limitations on it. A parent dies, you know, within 12 weeks you should still be sad and thinking about your parents, but you should be able to— you should be able to function. You know, you go through a real emotional trauma or breakup, well, how serious was it? How much time? What's the statute of limitations? A business goes out of business, okay, mourn for a little while. What is that, 2 months, 3 months? But if you aren't better, if you aren't back sending out emails, trying to raise money, going out trying to meet new people, whatever it might be within that timeline, you need to reach out for help and get unstuck because time goes really fast and your skills atrophy in a sort of a downward spiral.. And something I've always been able to do is mourn and move on. Churchill said the key to success is the ability to move through failure without losing your sense of enthusiasm. And I've tried, I've been pretty good at not losing my sense of enthusiasm.

If you don't have a kitchen cabinet of people that you learn enough about that you can mimic them. You're trying to play a team sport solo. You're on the field alone. And I didn't figure that out till I was older. So I absolutely, when I see something inspiring, I read maybe one book a year. People think I'm well-read. I'm not, but I'll find a book that's really meaningful and I'll try and read it 2 or 3 times so I can adopt it into my gray matter. Like Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Slow and Fast. I've read that book a few times and I know everything about loss aversion theory. I know a lot about the relationship between money and happiness. I read Observations of a Bystander by Peter Drucker. I read Sapiens several times. I want to like really, really, you know, embed stuff. Lately I write down things in my phone that I just think are fucking hilarious, like jokes. You know, when my doc— I wrote down something today as a prank. When my doctor walks in, I put on gloves. I'm going to try that. I love my doctor. I love the idea of him walking in and me snapping on gloves just to see his reaction. We were talking about Trump today, and I saw this great quote that said, "Consequences rarely show up lubed." I love that. I just, whenever I see something that really, I just think, you know, I love going out in the public except for the fact that the public is there. You see these things every day, and I will write them down and incorporate them into my rap, and especially great phrases. You know, greatness is in the agency of others. I remember my VC said that, and I'm like, that just makes so much goddamn sense. I'm gonna, use that over and over and over. So I have a lot of inspiration. I surround myself with really intelligent young people. I know that's ageist, but I think young people have a different frame on things that help me. So, but to not, to not sort of, if you're just reading something and not, you don't take away stuff you're gonna remember, you haven't really read it, you haven't really absorbed it. But it's all, all manner of stuff. I think, You're right. I'm totally inspired by George Carlin. I think he's fantastic on society. I'm inspired by Ricky Gervais. I'm inspired by this comedian named Michelle Wolf. I think she's fantastic. But yeah, I've read a lot about Muhammad Ali. I think he's, you know, be courageous, be poetic. But yeah, you absolutely, every young person should find a couple people they find really inspiring and try and learn everything about them and what they said such that you can kind of turn on your Muhammad Ali. And Madeleine Albright, Secretary of State, 4'10". I find her inspiring around public policy or on geopolitics. So I've read a lot about her. Our memory is long and our reach is far. I love that. She used to say that about America to its enemies, right? Basically a really eloquent way of saying, "Don't fuck with us, boys." And I just love that this 4'10" woman, only in America, can wield You know, the most powerful nation in the world in terms of our foreign policy abroad. And I found her and she was an immigrant. I just found her inspiring. So I wanted to learn more about her so I could be her on occasion.

Well, and sort of the motivation for the book was, you know, that study that you are kind of the average of your 5 closest friends. It— there's this weird study that peer group, the 5 people you hang out with, you end up being the same body mass index. You same end up with similar political values, same job, same neighborhood. I mean, it's just weird. You become the same person. What's different though, where there's greater variance, is that of those 5 people, even though they make kind of similar incomes, one will end up poor, 3 will be okay, and one will end up quite wealthy. And I tried to understand the behaviors that are different in the strategies between the person that ends up financially secure and the, the others that are less financially secure. And there's some general best practices around youth. You absolutely want to get to a city if you're ambitious. I'm not suggesting this is the right way, it's just my way. If you're ambitious and you want to have influence or economic security before you collect dogs and kids, you got to get to a city. Two-thirds of economic growth is going to happen in just 20 cities. And so if you're really ambitious, I mean, get to the biggest city in your nation, than get to London if you're in Europe or New York in the US, or if you're in tech, San Francisco, because those cities are really competitive and you're gonna be playing, you know how when you play tennis against players better than you, your game elevates? When you're in a big city, you're playing against the best players in the world. It's hard to live in Brooklyn, it's expensive, which means you gotta be really good at what you do and you're surrounded by people who are gonna inspire you and who are really will, Elevate your game. And at some point you'll probably have to move out of the city because it's, it's difficult with kids. But while you're young, get to a big city. Try and, try and find really high-character successful people to hang out with. Just find people you want to be like or that you admire professionally and personally and try and establish those friendships and try and hang out with them because you rise or fall to the level of your peer group. And the thing about cities is you're just bumping off opportunities. And I've moved to London and my reductive analysis of the US versus Europe is the US is still the best place to make money. Europe's the best place to spend it. So if you're in the making money part of your life, it's hard to beat the US. I didn't appreciate the American economy until I left it. People start from yes here. How can we work together? How can we build something together? How can we make money together? London, it's sort of like a very polite, indefinite maybe. There's very little actual organic value creation in London. It's people servicing other people's wealth that they made elsewhere. There's nothing like, there's nothing like America that says to a young person, if you work your ass off and you're really good and you get a little bit lucky, you know, you, things can happen for you here.

Well, not only that, but People say in America we embrace failure. That's not true, but we do tolerate it. And so only 1 out of 7 businesses succeed. So my strategy has been to start 9 businesses and I got to 2 wins and all you need is 1. And if you aren't trying really hard and taking risks and failing and then knowing when to pull the plug and move on, you're not taking advantage of the American embrace of risk and failure. I've never had trouble raising money because of past failures. People didn't mind that as long as you treated your investors well, as long as you were a decent person, you didn't do anything stupid or unethical, people don't have a problem funding you again. I'm, you know, I'm not, you know, I've had a lot of failure professionally, but I've never had, or I don't, you know, let me put it this way, when I couldn't raise money, it wasn't because I had failed before. And that's true in relationships. So yeah, the embrace or the acceptance of failure in America is, is, um, it's singular and it's a wonderful thing. And if you aren't trying and taking a lot of risk here, you aren't taking advantage of an economy that's one of the few in the world, one of the few societies. Um, I mean, if I was born in China, I'd probably be in jail because I'm outspoken and say stupid things. If I was born in Europe, you know, I think I'd be a talented business person, but I wouldn't be an entrepreneur that had recognized this success because they don't embrace failure, or that's wrong, they don't tolerate it the way we do.

Well, things have changed dramatically for me now. I'm not working nearly as hard. And I hire a lot of people and I'll over— not overhire, but everyone works hard, but I don't. I mean, when you have a small business and you don't have a lot of money, you know, you just, you gotta get— everyone needs, you, you need to work hard. You need to set an example and you need to create an environment where everyone's working hard. I'm not sure I was ever working 80 hours a week consistently. I definitely had weeks like that. But when I look back on it, kind of, I don't know, 10, 20, 10, 15 years, I don't remember much else other than work. I mean, I, I worked out when I had kids. I tried to spend some time with my kids. I still found time for fun and vacations, but you know, I would vacation 2 weeks a year. Now I vacation a lot more than that. And, but I don't see any way around it. It's really in my kids. When I say my kids, my students, I'll ask them how much money they expect to be making by the time they're 35. And about 90% of them expect to be in the top 1%, which is $750,000 a year in America. And then they'll talk about that, like, that's what I expect. But I'll say, what's most important to you in your life and moving forward? And a lot of the time they say balance. And I'm like, so you expect to be in the top 1% by the time you're 35, but you also believe you're gonna have balance in your life? I mean, I don't, I've never seen that. I don't, you can have it all, you just can't have it all at once. And by the way, that may not be the way to go. You may sacrifice, you may say, I wanna live a nice kind of balanced life. I'm gonna move to a suburb of St. Louis, coach Little League, work 40 hours a week, be a good citizen, find a good partner. You know, coach Little League, have a nice life. Nothing wrong with that. But the majority of the people I know, the young people, think they're gonna be in the top 1% and also have balance in their life. And I just think it's ridiculous. I'm like, okay, the only way to get there, to achieve that, is if you have one thing, and that's rich parents. Otherwise, expect to go all in on your career or scale back your expectations around your economics and your influence because it's a competitive market. And one of the things people can control is how hard they work. I don't think you wanna, I don't think you wanna work so much that you sacrifice your health or your relationships. There, there is gonna be some trade-off with your relationships. I didn't see my kids a lot when they were little. I, I, I was divorced. I think it was a contributor to that. I was always working in services companies and never saying no to any opportunity. The CMO of Samsung, can you be in Seoul tomorrow for a board meeting? Sure I can. You know, I mean, I just said yes to everything to try and move the company forward. But I, for a long period, worked very, very hard and sacrificed a lot, and it takes a toll. And I did it such that I could have a lot more balance now. But yeah, I don't— this notion, the myth of balance, get over it. If you expect to be influential or economically secure, You're not gonna have a lot of balance for a long period of time. Some people are such geniuses that they can work a modest amount of time, make a lot of money, work out, have a great relationship with their parents, be fit, donate time with the ASPCA, and have a food blog. Assume you are not that person. So just have a sober conversation and also have a sober conversation with your partner. How much money do we expect to have? Who's responsible for making it? What's your approach to spending? Where are we gonna live? You know, the number one source of divorce is not infidelity or lack of shared values. It's usually got something to do with money. And also 70% of divorce filings are filed by women who still, and we don't like to say this 'cause we like to pretend women have no agency and that they're just doughy little foes, is the man loses a business, becomes broke, or has a mental breakdown. When a man loses his status as a provider, um, he's very inclined to be on the wrong end of divorce. So I think a lot about young men. I think a lot about financial security. I think every man should start with the notion that he's going to be responsible for the economic well-being of his household. And by the way, sometimes that means getting out of the way and being more supportive of your partner who happens to be better at that money thing than you. And that's a wonderful thing, but start from a position of this is my responsibility. Um, and make sure you're aligned with your partner around this stuff because the thing we don't talk about is that your kids are gonna have higher blood pressure if you're economically strained. Kids in, kids in low-income households have greater systolic resting blood pressure than kids in middle and upper-income homes. You're much more likely to get divorced. You're much more likely to have a stroke. You're much more likely to be the victim or the perpetrator of domestic violence when you don't have money. I mean, America becomes more like itself every day, and that is it's a loving, generous place for people with money. It's a rapacious, violent place for people who don't have money. So all this bullshit that money doesn't buy you happiness, oh my God, is that a myth? I'm not saying you need to be incredibly wealthy, but middle-income people are happier than poor people, and wealthy people are happier than middle-income people. That's the bad news. The good news is, is that it tops out. You get diminishing returns and you have to be cognizant of when you do get to some level of economic security, that's the means. The ends is such that you can have an exhale, release the anxiety that you feel, and then use the opportunity to really spend a lot of time with your, your loved ones and cement those relationships. And the problem is you get on the hedonic treadmill and you become so absorbed in your own success and your professional identity and money and making more money that you never get to the ends. You wake up a wealthy person or someone who's financially secure, who's always thought about their economic wellbeing, and you don't really have a great relationship with your kids, or you never really leaned into your partnership and thought, okay, let's take time to really enjoy each other's company. Let's do nice things. Your parents die before you have a chance to really spend time with them as adults. I think that happens to a lot of people. They just get so caught up in I need the next promotion. I need the next amount of money. And once I get here, I have someone very close to my life. It's a family member and I'm taking them to Africa and they're like making excuses, but our kids in the choir, or they were making excuses. I'm like, you realize this is your last chance to go to Africa before you're dead, right? You're 50 fucking years old. When do you go? When you're 70? But you gotta get back to work an extra day. I mean, what are you thinking? We're gonna be dead soon. And I just think so many people don't realize how fast it's gonna go by and never really, never really like, not only super lean into the relationships, but just allow themselves just to have a great time. I'm going to Stagecoach this week. I'm gonna go see country music festival. I can't stand country, but I'm going. I'm gonna buy a pair of boots. I'm gonna have a great time and I'm gonna do an edible and I'm gonna drink a shit ton and I'm gonna have arrested adolescence with my friends and I'm gonna look ridiculous. And it's like, yeah, why, why not? Why the fuck not? What am I gonna do, watch C-SPAN all weekend? I mean, anyway, I, I can't stand it when people who are blessed with being in this country have some level of economic security, have people in their life that love them and they love, and they don't like crazy lean into it. 'Cause you guys are younger than I can. It just goes so goddamn fast. It's just crazy. It is just crazy how fast it goes.

Okay. So the Algebra of Wealth is the following, you know, find your talent. Focus, workshop your 20s in an industry that will pay you. Uh, once you have a certain amount of momentum professionally, really try and develop a savings muscle. Wealth isn't about how much you make, it's about how much you spend. Try and just get to the point at a fairly early stage where you spend less than you make. That is very difficult. The brightest companies and minds in the world are all here to convince you that an upgrade from economy to economy comfort to economy plus to business class is an investment in yourself. No, it's not. It's a, it's consumption. Don't try and impress other people with your shit. No one's as concerned with your shit as you are. You don't need to order a bottle of vodka at a club for $450. Get a Hyundai for God's sakes. Travel coach, save money, start saving money early. Lean in if you're young, lean into your advantage. And that is you have a lot of time. Develop that savings muscle. Diversify the moment you have any real capital. Start diversifying that way, no matter what happens. You have Kevlar. You can have a stock go to zero and a bullet hits you in the chest. It doesn't kill you 'cause you're diversified. And then take advantage of a flaw in the species, and that's time, and recognize that time will go faster than you think. And if you're just a little, show a little bit of discipline, a little bit of maturity, a little bit of that savings muscle early, that the S&P's up 11% a year since 2008. Well, that sounds boring. No, that means every 21 years your investments are up 8x. And that 21 years will go really fast. So hope you sell a bestselling book. Hope your company goes public. Hope you, you know, your album goes double platinum or some rich uncle dies and leaves you everything. But just in case, make sure you're financially secure. And I can get you there if you follow these principles and show a little bit of discipline, a little bit of maturity. Because the good news is I can get you rich. The bad news is the answer is slowly, but we can get you there.

If you have a side hustle, you need to find a different main hustle. You're better off with the time you spend on a side hustle investing that incremental effort in your main hustle. And if you constantly find a side hustle is fine if you're investigating a new main hustle, But the way you get wealthy is not a variety of things. It's being really great at one thing. So that's the focus. And the term we use is mastery or ninja-like capability. But try and find something you could become great at. And that is, you know, that's not easy. But also, again, we talked about this before, find it in an industry that's not very sexy. 'Cause if you're in the top 10% of tax law, or of installing HVAC or energy efficient HVAC, or you're in the top 10% of people who know how to install soapstone kitchen counters, you're gonna make a really good living. And taking care of your kids is just so much fun. Being able to be there for your parents is economically, is just, is just really exciting and really a lot of fun. And I think young people mistake passion for their hobbies. Not recognizing when they get older to be able to give money away, to be able to do nice things, to be able to relax with your partner. You know, it's just super enjoyable. It's almost as fun as, you know, spinning too. I mean, that shit is fun. That is really enjoyable. And so put yourself in a position when you're a little bit older, because it'll go really fast to just do wonderful things with people you care about and the way you get there. Is by making more than you spend, saving. But the first thing you gotta do is find a focus. You know, find something, you know, we are living, we live in a specialist economy. Find something like that's your, try and just think, could I be great at this? Could I be great at this? That's not the question. Because if you become great at it, trust me, you'll become passionate about it. And you can't become great at anything you hate. That's not, that's just gonna be automatically be screened out. I'm not suggesting drudgery is the way. If you find something drudgerous or whatever the term is, you're just not going to be great at it. But I found consulting. I never— I didn't know what consulting was when I was in college, even business school. I figured out, wait, people will pay you to rent your brain? Wow. And I was always really good at establishing these proxy father-son relationships with powerful men. And then basically my core deal with them is I understand brand better than you. You're the CMO. I'm gonna make you the CEO in 3 years. In exchange for that, you're gonna pay my company $1 million a year to answer very deep, hard questions. And I figured that out at kind of my late 20s, which was a blessing. And then when I sold the company, I'm like, I don't wanna be in services anymore. It's a young person's business. I'm sick of being on planes. So I had to workshop my life again. And then I figured out, okay, I'm a good teacher. What does it mean to be a good teacher? Means you have to be a good storyteller. But what if I story told in different mediums? Could I make money in books? Could I make money speaking? Could I make money in podcasts? And I figured out, yeah, I'm good at this. I could even be great someday. And that mastery has led to a really nice, nice life. But I've always tried to, I've always tried to spend reasonably, spend less than I was making, sometimes more than others. I finally learned to diversify the hard way. I lost everything twice in 2000 and again in 2008, 'cause I thought I would, I'm so awesome that whatever is my focus is just naturally gonna be successful through my sheer force of character. That's not true. So I started diversifying and, you know, just kind of followed these basic principles and let time take over and really started saving a lot of money in my forties. I deployed an army of capital to start fighting and killing for me and my family in my sleep. And that army just grew in a bull market. And, you know, came home with just immense spoils for me, you know, because I deployed this army early and often and I kept adding to it. I feel like, here's a tank. All right. Okay. I'm saving money. I'm not gonna have the fat apartment, right? Okay. Here's some more artillery. Go kill more people and come home with money. That's a little bit much.