Scott Galloway: Why I'm selling my American stocks

Old people are basically raping our economy for the last 30 or 40 years. It needs to stop.

Scott Galloway.

Scott Galloway.

Scott Galloway is a professor at NYU Stern School of Business. The Howard Stern of the business world.

We have a little shtick for you today. We want to ask you the 10 spiciest burning questions today that we had.

Long time to give up edibles, but far away. I am living large and I love it. I am so good at spending money. I spend money like a '50s gangster just diagnosed with ass cancer.

Scott, you want to get into this sucker?

Let's do it. I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to.

I put my all in it like no days off.

On the road, let's try. How honest do you want me to be? Is this offend people, negative comments, make it sure that people really believe I'm not running for president based on my answers? Like, are we going all Salsa, no chip here? What are we doing?

All right, so you did this post the other day, which was pretty hilarious. You said, I finally know what it feels like to be an attractive woman because I'm at Davos and everyone's looking down at my chest and deciding if they're gonna talk to me or not.

It was great.

I loved your Davos stuff. You actually said something amazing. You, you were like, I don't even wanna be here. I'd rather be at home with my kids. And I thought that was awesome. But what I wanna know is when you're around all these incredibly successful people, people who are actually like in the Illuminati, who had the most gravity towards them? Who were you drawn to?

Oh, hands down, Governor Newsom.

Wow.

I walked down, there's this in the Congress Hall. First off, I haven't been back to Davos in 27 years. I peaked early, like I came outta the gate strong and then divorce, dot-com implosion, great financial recession. My career went sideways for 10 or 15 years. So it's taken me 27 years to get back to Davos. And I'm walking around, I'm like, I'm not running for office, I'm not raising money. I don't— I'm not pitching anything. Why the fuck am I here? And my favorite moment, I walked down into the main area of the Congress Hall. Gavin Newsom was walking around like I'm the president and everyone believed him. He had an entourage. He— that guy has such star power. And this was the nicest moment for me because I'm desperate for other people's affirmation. He's walking with an entourage. He spots me in the corner of his eye and he comes over to me and he hugs me and he says, keep doing what you're doing. Governor Newsom has that star power, hands down star power. On the other side of the spectrum, I saw this old man with a potbelly walking around desperate to find someone to talk to, and no one was fucking interested. And it was Lindsey Graham. And that gave me a lot of joy.

Did you— you know, you're, you're, you're incredibly successful, you're incredibly influential, but when you're at Davos, you're around like literally the people controlling the world or the most famous, powerful people on earth. Was there anything that you learned?

I don't think I was able to discern differences or draw anything, conclusions around these type of people. The things I walked away from Davos with is that the last time I was there in '99, it was about e-commerce and the US brand was capitalism, consumption, and Bill Clinton. Now it's about AI. Everyone was talking about AI and it's about the American brand is chaos, coercion, and I don't know, compliance. I, I just, I find the US brand has fallen so far, so fast. I came away from Davos unsettled about how unsettled the world is right now, but I don't think I drew any— I personally, and people hate this, the billionaires I know, I know about a dozen, are actually really good people. The Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, like you can't be a billionaire unless you're a bad person. Well, okay, Elizabeth Warren, you were $20 million. Does that mean you're only a 50th as bad, but you're 20 times worse than a millionaire? I don't buy the, rich people are bad. I have generally found that, distinct to the Epstein files, which I understand gives people the impression that once men get to this point, they feel like they're no subject to the rules— I think that's a really interesting discussion— I personally have found that billionaires are generally very high-character people, because the key to being really successful is to create allies along the way such that you're put in a room of opportunities when you're not physically there.

As Will said, you, uh, What was the line that Newsom said? And should we all steal that line? Because I feel like that was the universal smooth guy line, just going up to somebody and saying, "Keep doing what you're doing." How does that not apply to any situation with anybody? I'm going to use that everywhere.

He seems so genuine. He— I've been on his pod. I know he likes me. I know my work's had influence on him. He's doing this big initiative around boys and young men. But I got to be honest, it just felt great to have that sort of recognition. But oh my God, that guy is the definition, the manifestation of rizz.

And I saw, I saw about a— I saw him on like a basketball podcast. It was, it was him and like 2 or 3 Black dudes. And he was talking about like, he like, what do they call it, code switching? And he like, talked about like growing up with like mac and cheese or something like that.

You know, like, you have some Wonder Bread. They're like, Wonder Bread? Yeah, man. And That clip went super viral of like, you know, if you hate him, you're like, he's faking the funk. If you like him, you're like, he's just being so real. You know, that's how everything goes.

He's, you know, he owned a winery called Plump Jack. He's literally wider than TED, the TED Conference. Like, that guy couldn't get any wider. He's wearing like Nautica and Dockers. Just, he should just lean into that.

Hey, one quick thing. So Scott, as you can see in this episode, has this ability to compress like 10 years of wisdom into one sentence. It's almost hard to let it sink in. And so the team at HubSpot, the sponsor of today's episode, actually went through all 4 times that he's been on our show and took all the best stuff and put it in one place. So anything he's talked about for wealth building, for power, for life advice, his predictions, what moves markets— it's dense, it's a document, it's available now, it's totally free. If you're ambitious and you enjoy hearing Scott's thoughts, I think you'll get a lot out of it. The link is in the description below. All right, back to this episode. Question, question number 2. All right. This is, this is a good one. You're a grown man. You got $100 million. You've got fame, you've got family, you've got influence. What is it that you're still hungry for that money has not been able to buy so far?

I want to launch good men. I feel like I have a deficit. I think I've taken more from the country and from taxpayers and from the freedoms I've enjoyed than I've given back. So I want to get to a point of surplus value. And like my purpose, my purpose is I want to, I want to raise good men. I want to know that when I'm towards the end, that I've raised really confident, loving men.

Did you always think in terms of purpose?

No. I mean, let me put it this way. My purpose, I had two purposes. I wanted to be really fucking rich and really fucking awesome so I could take care of my mom and be more attractive to strange women. That was my purpose the first 40 years of my life.

And so you, you have this perspective flip in your forties. You know, if you're influential to a bunch of guys today, who was that for you? Like, who influenced you to kind of change the way you were approaching things or shift your mindset or, you know, change your, your approach to life?

I've had, I've been really lucky. I've had a lot of male mentors in my life that have, you know, they usually say one thing that really sticks with me, but the, the big pivot for me in my life hands down was when my mind got, my mom got really sick and I couldn't take care of her. That just sort of changed everything for me. And that was money as a means of protecting people, not of having an awesome life. And it just sort of changed everything for me because up until that point, my life was prom, Star Wars, getting fucked up with friends. And then this happens to everybody. I don't know if it's happened to the two of you, but when someone you know and love gets really sick or, you know, and loves you a great deal, gets sick and dies, it just kind of, for me, it kind of changed everything. And not necessarily in a good way. I still feel like, you know, I'm a middle-aged man who hasn't gotten over the death of his mother. And also, I mean, it sounds very passé, but it's true. The death of my mother and the birth of my boys. And it wasn't a Hallmark Channel moment when my boys were born. I'm like, fuck, I need to make more money. And I, it was 2008. I lost everything. And I just felt this, like, it wasn't, angel singing and bright lights. By the way, I don't think men should be in the delivery room. It's fucking gross. Bring me the thing cleaned up with a bow in its hair while I'm smoking a cigarette. I think it's just so woke and stupid that they allow men into the delivery room. But anyways, I felt shame. I'm like, I've been so successful, I've had so many blessings, and I'm near broke, and now I'm responsible for this little science experiment. But it really rattled me. It was also very motivating. So it's no one person. It was very— birth and death as they're supposed to be have been the biggest influences on my life.

That's a great answer.

That's pretty awesome. Did you say you stopped worrying about making money in your 40s?

And have you ever said that line before? I spend, what did you say? I spend money like a '50s gangster who just got diagnosed with ass cancer. I have to know. Is that a line you've ever said before, or did that just—

Not more than 200 or 300 times, Sean. Um, I save all my best stuff for you.

I mean, you are so—

I was on Ben's— I was on Ben Stiller's podcast, and I said that, and he's like, oh, did you know I actually had ass cancer? I had my prostate removed. Uncomfortable pause. Uncomfortable pause. Ben's been very public. He had— he, he fought and beat prostate cancer.

Anyways, did he spend money, uh, lavishly when he had it?

I don't know what his approach to money is, but I think that, yeah, I, I, I think a finite nature of life or sense of that. I get that power from my atheism. I think if you're, this is, I mean, this is a 0.1% problem, but I can't stand it. I have rich friends that don't know how to spend their money or they don't give it away. It's like, what the fuck are you doing? Enjoy your life.

Well, that is question number 3. Perfect lead-in. Uh, you said something that we thought was genius. We've talked about it many times. You said America is the best place to earn money and Europe is the best place to spend money. And it got us thinking about spending money. What can we learn from you? We said, what else is the best way to spend money to improve quality of your life? What have you actually found is good bang for your buck? Spend it and it improves the quality of your life.

Are we talking about a lot of money?

Whatever comes to mind when I say that.

Yeah, you can talk about— oh, hands down, a private plane. Hands down. It lowers the bar for fun.

You buy or you charter when you need it?

I've owned a plane. That was a ton of fun, but it's a ton of work because your pilots get divorced and there's safety checks and all this bullshit. It's like managing a small business. Charter is difficult because you end up comparing the prices and it's a lot of work. Hands down, fractional is the way to go because you essentially can arbitrage, scale up or down based on the mission. If it's just you flying somewhere, you don't want to belch that much shit into the air, so you go smaller plane. If you're taking two families to India, which I'm doing, you get a big plane and you don't, you basically just text them. Yeah, it's about— I spend about $1.5 or $2 million a year. But a friend of mine from high school I really like, Mormon kid, getting married in a weird place. I'm going. Why? Because I have a fucking private plane. I figured it out. I can spend another 17 days a year either with my family or doing something fun because I'm not going to— I'm not connecting through, you know, through Dallas-Fort Worth and getting delayed. I'm also a bit of a nervous flyer. But yeah, I mean, I hate to say take my house, don't take my plane.

Is there anything that your billionaire buddies spend on that you think is stupid and not worth it?

Art and wine. Art is— I'm trying to buy culture. I've been a boring douchebag my whole life, so all of a sudden I'm going to start overspending on art and it makes me interesting. No, it doesn't. You're still the same douchebag.

What about something that was— that's a good way to spend that's below the PJ?, like threshold?

Oh, travel. If you have kids, just go, you know, take 'em to elephant camp in Bangkok. Like go on safari.

What age did you, uh, start traveling with your kids? I've got a, a 2-year-old and a, and a, and a 3-month-old and I'm looking forward to traveling.

That's awesome. You, you had a pretty bold thought last time that you were on. I think you said something like you, you predicted that America's decade, the next decade for America is going to be flat in terms of economic growth. And I think you also said for the index funds, Do you still believe that to be true?

Well, I mean, that's a leading question, but I, I, I would've always assumed America.

Oh, see, I think if you take, okay, every public company in China, Europe, Latin America, you think is worth less than the public companies in America?

I think, I think, I think like, I think that when you look at the S&P, I think that the big American companies to me aren't American companies.

They are— well, they're international. I mean, that's fair.

That's fair. That's so like Apple's not an American company. It has its major office in Cupertino, but I don't think of it as an American company at this point.

That's, that's— I think that's a thoughtful response. Yeah. I think America's too expensive right now. I think Europe's on sale. And by virtue of the fact that I am an American and basically the majority of my advertisers, I'm always gonna be very invested in America 'cause I own a bunch of real estate in America and my company is largely driven by American human capital and American advertisers. So what I'm trying to do is, I think the most powerful word I didn't learn until I was in my forties was diversification. I just think America's expensive right now. It's not even a statement on the judgment on America or American companies. I just think America's, overvalued right now.

Do you want to hear some of the other predictions that you made on our podcast? And we went and looked if they were right or wrong. You said Apple was overvalued. I think we did this podcast 8 months ago. You said Apple, Apple was overvalued. You were right. They— I think the stock went down since then. You said that we— what did you say? You said that the GLP-1s were going to be bigger than GPT-4. I believe you were right there. I think the GLP-1 market cap, I think there's like a GLP-1 index, I think has grown faster than ChatGPT or OpenAI's valuation. You said mRNA stocks are going to decline, and I think you got that correct big time.

Moderna is up 90%.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's down. And then you also said that— but here's this interesting one. You said that food— you thought that food stocks because of GLP-1s were going to be down and McDonald's is not down, I think. But I think you like made a prediction that you thought that GLP-1s would be so big that McDonald's were going to go down.

I think GLP-1 is a more transformative technology than AI. I've said this for a couple of years. So Sean, we were talking about microdosing. Yeah. Or whatever it is. I'm going to assume you are microdosing GLP-1 drugs. Let me ask you, what's had a bigger impact on your life, GLP-1 drugs or AI?

I don't microdose. What do you mean? I don't microdose GLP-1s. So I can't—

Oh, I just assumed since I've seen you, you're fit and trim, which I assume means you're on Wegovy. But we'll go with the notion you're on—

You just Gavin Newsom'd me.

That is a wild take. That's what we were going to actually ask you. If you were in charge for a certain amount of time and you could wave a magic wand, what would you do? And you just answered that question. That's— I never— it's very interesting. I never in a million years thought you were going to say that.

Do you feel like the— do you feel like the data is out on, you know, the either long-term effects, the downsides of it, or are you saying doesn't really matter. The upside is so big that we can, we can figure out how to mitigate the downsides.

Oh, I mean, I'm not a scientist. We might find out that 30 years down the road people are getting pancreatic cancer.

But generally speaking, President Galloway, you just ordered a billion doses.

Generally speaking, there's no free lunch, right? Generally speaking, whenever the AIDS cocktail was worth it, but it ended up giving, giving people who are on it cholesterol problems. Chemotherapy is amazing. You do enough of it, you're going to get leukemia in 20 or 30 years. There's just no There's no free lunch. I'm a much better version of me, a little fucked up. I love alcohol. I've got more out of it than it's gotten out of me. There's definitely not a free lunch around alcohol. So far, everything we keep learning about GLP-1 is that, oh, it's even better than we thought. It might—

It makes you live longer.

It might delay cognitive decline.

It stopped my gambling addiction.

Porn addiction. People are biting their nails less.

Have you taken it?

No, I might microdose it at some point.

I'll be the guinea pig here. I had drinking and drug issues, and I've been sober for a long time.

Same story. You came on here, you came on the podcast, like, what, 4 years ago?

20, I think, or 21.

Yeah, 5 years ago. He told me about something he read in a Reddit forum, and he injected into his body. This was before the trend. And he's like, this thing is amazing. He's like, yeah, I'm losing weight. He's like, but I also, I don't have any cravings. You told me, you said on the podcast, you go, I think this is going to cure alcoholism.

What technology tells you to stop eating ice cream and eat more kale?

Well, okay, so I've been sober for 12 years or so, but when I took it 5 years ago, I was like, you know what's crazy is I walked by a brewery the other day and sometimes when I walk by breweries and I smell like hops, you guys ever like smell that in the middle of the day? I'm like, oh, that's amazing. I wish I was there. I remember smelling it and I was like, I don't like wish I would, like, I don't want to go there and like drink this stuff. And then I remember eating like a scoop of ice cream or just a bite of ice cream. And I was like, that was lovely. I don't want it anymore.

I'm done.

And then I also bit my nails less. It was a magical drug. It was a very magical drug. And people like me, I'm a fairly fit person. I don't know if it's entirely— it's not necessary for people like me, but if you're obese, I think it's, it's really amazing. But yeah, I, and I, and I'll microdose it every once in a while because I just think it's interesting. And there's always like new varieties, you know, it's like getting the latest and greatest car. There's all these like new varieties that are just like wild. It is pretty amazing. I think metformin is really interesting too, but there's a bunch of these drugs, man. They are pretty crazy.

I think it's— I'd give that out. I really enjoy this president thing. I would eliminate capital gains and mortgage interest rate deductions.

Actually, I need to correct myself. We said dictator. Your dictator.

Oh, better, much better.

So, so this dictator should—

if you have a benign— the best-run countries in the world, i.e., Singapore, it's a benign dictator. Like, if you get a good dictator, that's absolutely the way to go. You could argue that China, in a lot of ways— I mean, we hate anything that's not democratic, I get it. The Uyghurs, a lot of people describe Xi as a murderous autocrat. The life expectancy 40 years ago in China was 47. It's now 77. They brought 500 million people out of poverty into the middle class. And you could argue that China has pulled off something so incredible. Anyways, I would do get rid of capital gains tax deduction, mortgage interest rate. Who owns homes and stocks? People my age, young people.

You get rid of capital gains. You're, you're, you're a complex person, man. You, you don't fall into one category. Why would you do that?

But how does, how does that tie to the capital gains? 'Cause don't older people own the assets that would benefit from no capital gains tax?

No, no, no. What I'm sorry, what I mean is They pay current income. They don't get a tax deduction. There should be one. It should be Reagan. There should be one income tax rate for all income you make. And by the way, anyone under the age of 30, like Portugal, should have a tax holiday for the first $100,000. We desperately need to level up young people who don't like America and have mandatory national service such that they start meeting other great Americans.

That's the tax holiday is a great idea.

We need to level up. I mean, it's pretty fucking simple. We need to put more money in the pockets of young people. And stop transferring $1.2 trillion from young people to the wealthiest generation in the history of planet, old people. Old people are basically raping our economy for the last 30 or 40 years. It needs to stop. Okay. And what do you know? Our Washington, DC is a cross between the Golden Girls and the Land of the Dead, and they keep voting themselves more money. $40 billion child tax credit that would benefit young families stripped outta the infrastructure bill, but the $120 billion cost of living adjustment for Social Security flies right through. Enough already.

So you haven't really thought about that question ever before. Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay. But Governor Newsom likes me.

You're talking about things that me and Sam don't know about, so we're going to shift it to things we understand. Okay. So you've talked about— question 5 is you've talked about how there's this male loneliness epidemic and you've talked about like policy changes or self-motivated and high agency changes that the individual can make. What's the business opportunity around the sort of young lost male epidemic?

Didn't you used to own like a social club in New York? Did I remember that correctly?

But your, your, your, your big career win was L2, which, you know, that's— I started watching you years and years ago on L2 because you would do No Mercy, No Malice, these amazing YouTube videos. I think I never, to be honest, I never understood exactly what L2 was. I didn't know if it was like a consultancy or software, but it was basically helping brands look at different data to decide where they rank and what they need to do to improve. But you made that pretty— I mean, that on paper does not sound exciting. You made it pretty sexy and cool. I loved watching your YouTube videos. That was pretty awesome.

Ooh, make me weak at my knees just saying that.

Oh yeah, that's because you like money. But yeah, that and then recurring revenue model, you know, we ultimately ended up selling for 8 times revenues. When I was doing strategy consulting, which sounded much cooler, I would charge William Sonoma or Levi's $500,000 to do their internet strategy and then like 2/3 of the way through the engagement come up with new problems that only I could solve. So they would pay me more. But the recurring revenue, international benchmarking, you know, digital, you know, I think it sounds cool. I like that stuff, but I want to be quarterback of the Jets. That sounded much cooler to me when I was in high school. I didn't think I'd be in digital benchmarking, so, or analytics. But yeah, the less sexy an industry, the greater the return on your human and financial capital.

So I live in San Francisco and in the last 4 years, the most sexy thing to be investing in is AI. And my biggest investment has been put millions and millions of dollars into retail shopping centers, which if you walk around San Francisco, anybody here will tell you That's dead. What are you talking about? People don't go to brick-and-mortar stores anymore.

I think it's going to be a great investment, but it's been phenomenal.

Simon Properties is killing it.

Nobody builds anymore. It's just supply constraint. And so You know, my investor updates are not about AI. It's about how Burlington Coat Factory signed, you know, extended their 10-year lease and how we just put in a HomeGoods or, you know, like into these, into these centers. And it's been the least sexy but the most profitable investment I made. All of my venture investing is giving me zero cash flow and, you know, sort of zero returns because it's this 10-year arc, whereas boring shopping centers has crushed it for me.

Yeah, I'm I mean, there's some nuance there because I think the tier 2 malls were struggling, but the— yeah, I mean, some were in violent agreement.

Well, actually, one of the things you said about third places has actually shown up to be true. So the one thing that died was like Macy's or like, you know, a bunch of bankruptcies for Joann's and things like that. Yeah, but they all get replaced with experiential things. So it's trampoline parks, it's Topgolf, it's, you know, things like that that are experiences that people want to go do. And so you're seeing anybody who understood that can look at a center that has vacancy or a tenant on the way out. But you can— there's tons of demand for these experiential things to fill them up. Yep. Today's episode is brought to you by HubSpot. Did you know that most businesses only use 20% of their data? That's like reading a book, but then tearing out 4/5 of the pages. Point is, you miss a lot. And unless you're using HubSpot, the customer platform that gives you access to the data you need to grow your business, The insights that are trapped in emails, call logs, transcripts, all that unstructured data makes all the difference because when you know more, you grow more. And so if you want to read the whole book instead of just reading part of it, visit HubSpot.com.

You've, you've talked a lot about marriage and this is our next question, but you said you talk about how important it is both financially and emotionally to marry the right person. So if we were going to do the, the inversion of that, what would you say is the best and easiest way to marry the wrong person?

You, uh, you are just so, uh, full of soundbites. Like, the, the best aphrodisiac to give a woman is a follow-up question. When we asked— when I— when we just asked you that, when I asked you that, I— the way that you got silent and were slow to answer, I was like, nice, he's never, uh, talked about it this way, and we're gonna get something totally fresh. But then you like say these phrases where I'm like, How on earth do you come up with this stuff? It's really, it's really, really good. Sean and I were talking about Eddie Murphy and he was like, I'm a good comedian because I'm sensitive. I'm very sensitive to details and I see things that maybe other people don't see and I just notice things and I am able to talk about them and it makes everyone laugh because it's something that they all notice, but they're not exactly sure that they're sensitive enough to really comment on it. What allows you, do you think, to come up with these interesting observations? Is it being sensitive? What is it?

It's mostly IP theft. I get most of my ideas from other people and I'll pause when I see something really interesting or that kind of moves me and I'll repeat it a bunch of times and try and apply it so I try to remember it. I've just found this thing, I forget who even said it, but it really moved me and it was that everything does not demand your judgment. You don't have, you are entitled to not have opinions on things and it, I just paused and I thought about it over and over and over. And I've used that, I've used that line a bunch of times 'cause I was falling into this trap of Dunning-Kruger. I thought, okay, 'cause I have some insight around a couple things that everyone demands to deserve and wants my opinion on everything. And I, I do all these hot takes on the podcast and videos and you know, it's like the Epstein files come out and I'm like, all right, how do I wrap my hands around that? And I'm like, you know what, maybe the world isn't dying to hear from me about the Epstein files. Maybe the world isn't dying to hear about my views on Iran, although I have a lot of views on Iran. It's like, okay, it's okay to occasionally sit back and just shut the fuck up. Anyways, my point is, if I see something that I find really insightful and interesting, I stop, I read it a bunch of times, I try and apply it, and I try to cement it into my gray matter. So I don't think I'm that insightful. I think I'm good at identifying thoughtful ideas, and I try to reference where I got the idea from, but there's so much amazing material out there.

It seems like you pay attention to what resonates better than most, what resonates with yourself. I think that's kind of like the Eddie Murphy sensitivity idea also. But it does seem like there has to be either an incredible knack for just nailing it, put, you know, be putting the words around it right away, or an intentional effort to kind of punch things up. I guess, like, how do you arrive at the kill shot that you have at the end? Right? You've said 10 of them on this podcast already. And, you know, in some ways we're asking Steph Curry to tell us how to shoot a jump shot, but like, do you do anything that you think the average person doesn't do to be better at that?

Well, first off, you're being generous. I get it wrong a lot.

I'm not saying you're right, I'm saying you're lyrical. I'm saying you're very persuasive.

I say really stupid things all the time, and, and, you know, in my comments section will remind me of that all the time. Um, I get it wrong a lot. I don't know if it's 49 or 50, it's two things. I don't know if it's 49 or 51% genetic. My father was really a gifted storyteller and he was a salesman. He had a Scottish accent and a big strong jawline. And I just noticed from the age of 8 that people would create a semicircle around him just to listen to him. He just had a, he was just an amazing storyteller. And a lot of my ability to communicate is not my fault. And then, You may have a great swing naturally, but if you don't take lessons every day and play 4 hours of golf, you're not going to be Tiger Woods. And I'm not at that same level, but I'm like a guy who just got his, you know, amateur pro-am card. I get to speak for 22 years. I speak in front of 160 students paying $180,000 per class to listen to me talk about something. I'm on podcasts every day. I write several thousand words a week about a concept and really trying to understand it. I have a group of analysts who find data. So I'm practicing golf 4 hours a day. There's no such— Michael Phelps is in the pool 6 hours a day from the age of 5. You have to, and by the way, he has naturally huge webbed feet that are not his fault, right? I think if there's one secret sauce to communicating is that if you can write well, you're gonna be a decent communicator. And I got a C in English in high school, but I've never stopped writing. Yeah. So again, it's some, some genetics, some hard work, some practice.

Can you actually tell us when do you find time? Because I'm so— profgalloway.com, No Mercy, No Malice is the blog, which I read, I love. And so you just wrote up 2 blog posts this week or in the past 2 weeks, actually.

What's that? What's the total volume? So it's like 2 newsletters a week. It's how many podcasts, how many extra YouTube videos, you know, like what's the total volume you're outputting in a week?

I write a book every 18 months. Okay. I do 7 podcasts a week. I put out a newsletter every week.

7 recordings a week?

But are you sitting down and actually writing this, these 1000 or 2000 words, and then they're going to take that and help you turn it into more stuff?

On Monday mornings, we do an editorial team with all the producers, all the data analysts, all the podcast hosts, and I have several writers, and we go through stories. So Epstein files, biggest story. I'm like, do we have anything original to say here? What's the angle? No, we don't have an angle here. Then I'm not interested in talking about it. Oh, let's write about the power of national or economic strikes, why it's so powerful, and that the Trump administration only listens to markets, doesn't listen Listen to protests, citizenry. That's an interesting angle. All right, you're writing the newsletter this week. You draft these paragraphs, I'll draft these 3 paragraphs. I'll edit it Thursday night. We need, oh, we have Josh Shapiro coming on the podcast tomorrow. What are the questions? We just go through all the different stories and content, and then we try and come up with original things, and then we start producing the content. And then when it's good, we have great editors, we snake it through our channels. It might be the newsletter, it might be our Instagram posts, it might be, our LinkedIn. It might be, if I really like something, I'm like, okay, that's gonna be chapter 7 of a book on called Project 2028, which is my next book, which is a response to Project 2025, more of a progressive like policy book. But we do an editorial meeting and people get to work. They pitch stories, they pitch me on all these stories and I say, what's the angle here? What's the data or the insight we're bringing to the story? And if you can't answer that question, I'm like, well, let CNBC or CNN cover it.

And what about your solo creative time? So, you know, Disney would wake up and doodle. Sure. Seinfeld wakes up, goes to the kitchen table and writes jokes for 2 hours. It's, you know, the solitude part where you're going to have your original ideas outside of the team.

Yeah.

I generally go to sleep around 2 or 3 AM and I sleep till about 10. And my creative time is usually my best hours are between 11 PM and 2 AM with the dogs. Everyone's asleep. I feel at peace. I know my boys are safe. I turn on my fireplace. Sometimes I have a drink, sometimes I have an edible, and my dogs are with me. And I do some surfing online. I think about something that's inspired me, and I'll either go downstairs and do a video in a fur coat, or I'll start writing. And then the next morning I look at it and go, this is shit. Or I go, oh, this is pretty good. And I start pinging it around and I say, okay, add some data here. Get— I'll send it to our illustration people and say, start thinking about charts for this. We're gonna put it out. In newsletter form or as a video. But I'm constantly thinking about and producing data. But my flow state is really, really late at night.

Are you doing any company running, like any administrative or any managing?

Less and less. I used to do that a lot. I, you know, like you, Sam, I've run and built companies. Now I, I have the luxury of doing what I want to do. And what I want to do is create content. And I have outstanding people, um, uh, Catherine Dillon and a woman named Claude DeJocques, just, uh, uh, who's been working for a long time. Catherine's been my partner for 15 years. They run the business. Occasionally they'll bring me in to try and close someone we're hiring. I get on the phone, I see the finance. I love numbers. I see the financials almost every week, and I think I can spot weakness and strength from the analytics and the numbers. But for the most part, I want out of the business. I love running business except for the clients and the employees. I have other people managing everything almost, and they're really talented and I pay them really well and I can focus on doing what I love, which is creating content and, and saying provocative, interesting things and trying to have, you know, trying to matter, if you will. But I'm out of the business of running businesses. I'm done. I am Done.

Were you a good boss?

I think the fun part about talking with you is like this. Okay, so this podcast, we started out as like incredibly ambitious, like get after it type of like guys in San Francisco, incredibly insecure guys who thought success would solve the problem. Yeah, but we— it's really fun talking to you because I think that like you have to remind yourself on a consistent basis that the reason why this whole entrepreneurship thing is kind of cool is because you could help others. You could put your debt in the earth and all that stuff, but you could do it your way. You know, the best part about this podcast, we've done nearly 800 episodes.

We've talked—

we've talked to so many people and we could show you examples of someone who has broken every single rule or followed every single rule and they've still gotten to the end state, the end goal. And the cool thing about business is there's just— you can, you can, you can do it anyway. And it's really cool to hear you explain the ways that you do things, which is very unconventional, super not common, and you are achieving the desired goal, which is to build a great company, to treat people well, and to have a good life.

Well, why'd you go? Why'd you go to Jackson Hole? Why'd you go there?

Because I'm still insecure and think that if I get invited back to Davos, that I will be enough, that finally I will fill the hole that can't seem to be filled here.

It sounds like Gavin did fill the hole, though.

Well, okay, it was fine, but I shouldn't— there's no reason for me to go to Davos. There's literally no reason. I mean, great, a fist bump from Governor Newsom is fantastic, but I get invited to everything. That sounds obnoxious, but it's true. Go to the sexy shit. Cannes Lions, Hotel du Cap, that shit's sexy. Go to South by Southwest, Tex-Mex food, all these podcasters, weird afterparty, that shit's sexy. Davos has the sex appeal of a Marriott lobby. It is, it just couldn't be any more non-sexy anyways. It's liberating to go, do I need to go to this seminar? 'Cause there's gonna be a lot of powerful people there. Do I need to accept a speaking gig? 'Cause it's a lot of money. No, you don't need to.

So, so you've talked about economic security and you said that term a bunch of times. If somebody's listening to this and they go, what numbers does that take? And it's obviously, you know, somewhat different for everybody, but walk, walk the listener through what is economic security? How should they think about that? Because, I know guys who've got a lot who still need more. I know people who don't have much that should probably fight a little harder to get a little bit more cuz they'd have more free time. Give me the, the milestones or the benchmarks and ideally with numbers that, that you can think of.

And does that change over time? 'Cause you know, your burn at the time when you probably first got secure was different than now if you're spending $3 million a year.

I've been very open about this. I think not talking about your money is an attempt to keep middle and lower income homes down. Rich people talk about money to each other all the time. I spend $300,000 to $400,000 a month. So if you take that, a $5 million times 25, I need $125 million to be economically secure. And by the way, when I was younger, I thought if I ever have $1 million, I'm done. I used to think like in my 20s, if I could ever save $1 million, I'm done. I'm going to start writing scripts for Tom Cruise films and just do whatever I want. And then as you get older, you realize how expensive kids are, how expensive it is to live in New York, how expensive it is to take care of your parents. And your taste and your greed glands begin to grow, right? You're like, I could never imagine, you know, owning multiple homes. Pretty soon you can.

I live in Manhattan and it's just crazy seeing how people live, man. There's people— you could earn $3 million a year. This, this is going to be a clip that someone's going to mock me for. But let me just say, you can make $2 to $3 million a year and seriously, with a family and live paycheck to paycheck. Like, it's crazy how much, how much money people spend to live here. I know people who will spend $100,000 a month and they tell me they don't feel rich. It's pretty wild.

Let me tell you about the first time I tried to run payroll for my team. I was using a traditional bank and you know the type. It's got a janky interface. It's built like a 2002 tax form, and it was open only during business hours. And I hit send and it froze. They flagged the transaction. They locked my account. They put me on hold for 45 minutes, and then they told me I got to visit my local branch., and that was the day I started looking for a new banking solution. Uh, after asking a few founders what they were using, I found out about Mercury. And so now my payroll is 2 clicks. I can wire money, I can pay invoices, I can reimburse the team all from one clean dashboard. That's why I use it for all of my companies. And so do 200,000 other startup founders. And so if you're looking to level up your banking, head to mercury.com and apply in minutes. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services are provided through Choice Financial Group, Columbine, and Evolve Bank and Trust members FDIC. Okay, we can finish with this. So you've, uh, You've got sons, and that's why I almost want to think about what you would tell your sons. So I want to know what advice you believe to be true, but a part of you hesitates to say it publicly because it might sound harsh or unfair and people won't like it.

I have a lot of those.

Yeah, you kind of made your profession off this, but I think for most people, this is a pretty tough question.

Drink more, go out, drink more, make a series of bad decisions that might pay off. Um, when you're in the company of women, you pay for everything always. No woman is ever going to kiss you if— who splits the check with you. All, all mammals have a mating process. The downside of sex is much greater for a woman. Her fertility window is much shorter. Men benefit more from relationships. The asymmetry and advantage of going on a date with a woman— one way you restore that asymmetry and demonstrate valor is to pay with absolutely no expectation. It's just It's just a given. And my kids are like, Dad, you're so boomer. And I'm like, just be clear, no one's ever going to kiss you who you don't pay for.

Is that what you said to the woman on your first date when she's like, oh no, let's split it? And you're like, listen, fertility pills.

I think that is something that TikTokers talk about. I've never seen a woman grab for a check. And I know that sounds sexist. I have just— I've never, I've never in my life had a woman pay for anything. And I know that I like to pay before I get there. So it's not awkward with like 9 pages and I can't read the tip.

That's a baller move.

Just, just, we're done. There's no expectation. I'm not a John, you're not a prostitute, but I appreciate your time. I am hoping some— at some point to have sex with you, so I want to demonstrate strength and that I can take care of your kids. Versus the guy wearing a Casio watch who talks about sending you a Venmo request. I don't care what anyone says, one way you demonstrate value, valor, and masculinity— if you can't pay— I hate it when men split checks. Dude, man the fuck up. You get this one, I get the next one.

You don't split checks.

You're gonna make some waiter go back and figure out how to split the check and who's gonna give them 14 or 17%. I, I, I've done this from a young age. I did not have money until I was in my forties. If I couldn't afford to pay, I didn't go. I didn't go. And anyways, drink more. I've gotten real pushback on that. And men should always pay. Always. So those are two things.

There's some nuance here, and my partner reminded me of this. I always pay for every dinner and she's like, you realize This is an ego thing and it's about control. And she goes, I get where you're coming from, but people who are your friends and also have their own economic security don't want you constantly asserting your ego and your power over them by paying for everything all the time. That this is about your insecurity. It's no longer about your generosity. It's about your insecurity and trying to express some sort of weird fucked up dominance. And I got so angry when she said this because I think some of it is true. And the reality is your friends, like I always used to be, don't ask my friends for it. Once I got success, don't ask my friends for anything. Offer them advice, help them out. And the reality is that's not a friendship.

Yeah, that's sort of obnoxious.

That's like, yeah, big, big, big time. Yeah. Occasionally you need to call your friends and say, I'm struggling with my marriage, or I just got diagnosed with high blood pressure and I'm really upset about it. Your friends wanna comfort you. Your friends don't wanna be just your, you know, beneficiary. They want occasionally to say, no, I'm doing well. I can pay for dinner. I get that. I think that if you're not letting occasionally asking your friends for help and being vulnerable and exposing your insecurities and your weaknesses and your anxiety, then you don't have a friendship. And what I realized was a lot of it was ego with me trying to, thump my chest. I don't need anyone's help. I just help everybody else. Then you don't have friendships. You have a series of transactions. But I go back to what I was saying. Anyone with ovaries, you pay for fucking everything.

No nuance to that one. What I like is that you have a code. I think that I'm always interested and attracted to people who have their own code that they've established, a way of living. And I tend to disagree with a lot of their code, but more than anything, I agree with the fact that they have a code and I respect that. I think most people lack a code to live by. I think they lack an operating philosophy. I think maybe religion used to give it to them. I think they reject the one that their parents or society want. There's a natural desire to reject what your parents or society pushes on you, but it's not replaced or substituted with a valuable operating philosophy. And I think that's probably one of the things I think people lack the most. And so I hope that even if you disagree with half of the shit that Scott said, I think the more important thing is to ask, do you have a code? And do you have a code that you live by and that you've established on your own terms from your own lived experiences and values?

I 100% agree. Some people get their— everybody needs a code. Too many decisions coming at you without a code. Some people get it from religion, the military, their parents. I didn't have a code when I was younger. I was trying to handle everything extemporaneously and it was hard. So yeah, an imperfect code is better than no code at all. Otherwise it's so hard to just know how to handle all these situations. And I very much agree. You guys never brought up my site or my movement, Resist and Unsubscribe.

Oh wait, I really don't, I don't even know what this is all about. Tell me, tell me, like tell me from the beginning. I genuinely don't, don't even know what you're talking about.

And these companies, they are specifically contributing to the problem, or you're just saying the whole market has to shake for the administration to move? It's not that these individual companies did anything wrong. Is that what you're saying?

Oh no. They're enabling this bullshit. When Tim Cook shows up with inscribed hard drives and goes to the Melania premiere, when Jeff Bezos pays $45 million for a documentary that brightens up the room by fucking leaving it.

So you're picking companies that have kissed the ring is what you're talking about.

These are the enablers. These are the people who've said, okay, kiss his ass. I mean, there's some historical precedents here. In the early '30s Germany, the captains of the manufacturing industry turned to Bly and Dyer, to Hitler and the rise of fascism, because he said, if you don't come out against me, they were very worried about him. I will crush the trade unions and you will make a shit ton of money. There's an apt analogy here, and that is I get text messages from these guys saying, I hate myself. I don't wanna go to the White House. I'm like, well, I hate you too, 'cause you're not willing to speak up. And the very values and principles, rule of law, capitalism, competition, free markets that built these amazing companies and made these guys billionaires is under attack right now. And they don't wanna speak up because they think they're gonna make money. Well, be careful what you ask for, but these are the enablers and your free gift with purchase. Spend less money, send a message to the people who, you know, tell them to put away the knee pads and speak your mind. They probably have to do it collectively because he goes after people who go first. But this is a great way to send a message to the president, to the markets, and to these individuals that this, what, what is happening here is un-American. And you are desecrating the values that made you so goddamn rich.

And earlier you had said you have researchers and you were talking about your editorial process. And the example you used was like the power of a boycott. When I hear you talk about this, I think my $10 YouTube subscription doesn't move the needle, but it sounds like you have some data that shows otherwise.

If Microsoft misses its expectations by 1 percentage point, It loses 10% of its value. Other companies go down in sympathy. The Nasdaq 100 lost 1.5% in one day. The only time the president has walked back the annexation of Greenland or tariffs is when the markets have moved.

How many people do you need to do to participate for this to matter?

The reality is, okay, so these are my objectives. My objectives is to send a signal to the markets and to consumers that they have power with their purchases and that they should be thoughtful about where they spend money and where they decide not to spend money. I'm trying to assemble infrastructure. Part of my infrastructure is a website that makes it easy for people to unsubscribe from big tech platforms. I would love it if enough people collectively canceled such that all of a sudden, amongst a variety of reasons, the, the CEOs of these companies say, maybe we should be a little less sycophantic. Maybe we should push back. Is that happening right now? Probably not. I'm getting 100,000 uniques a day to my site. I'm getting thousands of screenshots, but is OpenAI changing its plans because of what I'm doing? Probably not. But here's the thing, as you get older, I'm sick of heckling from the fucking cheap seats. I want to be on the field. I want to be doing something. And when I was a younger man, I used to take public risks and now I just get angry at everybody else. So I wanted to do something, but it, I'll be honest, it's going to take a lot, but it would take less unsubscribing from big tech to have an impact than anything else. And one-day protests are powerful, but they're more symbolic, they're more cinematic than powerful. I think if single-digit millions of people unsubscribe from tech platforms, one, they'd find out that they're saving a lot of money and spending money where they didn't think to. And I think these guys would notice. So yeah, you know, I'm one hair on the, horse's tail, but I'm kind of sick of talking about it, not doing anything.

It must be kind of fun, though, a little bit too. Like you said, like you're like, I like to give money because it makes me feel good. This kind of— I think that it feels nice to have an enemy and to get behind a movement.

And our YouTube channel is not on this list. Feel free to keep that subscription. We are not part of the testicles of this country.

That's right.

That's right. So that, uh, resistandunsubscribe.com, that's, uh, that's where they do it. All right, Scott, amazing as always. Thanks for coming on, man. I hope you had fun.

I really enjoy this. Thanks, guys. I appreciate the thoughtful questions.

Cool. All right. Thank you, man. That's it. That's the pod.

We appreciate you. Take care. I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to.

I put my all in it like no days off.

On the road, let's travel, never looking back.

All right, my friends, I have a new podcast for you guys to check out. It's called Content is Profit and it's hosted by Luis and Fonzie Cameo. After years of building content teams and frameworks for companies like Red Bull and Orangetheory Fitness, Luis and Fonzie are on a mission to bridge the gap between Content and revenue. In each episode, you're gonna hear from top entrepreneurs and creators, and you're gonna hear 'em share their secrets and strategies to turn their content into profit. So you can check out Content is Profit wherever you get your podcasts.