Scott Adams: Listen To Your Audience & Don't Engage In Loserthink

I always let the audience tell me what my job is. I don't do it the other way around. When I did Dilber, I put it out there and it really was a failure in the first couple of years. It didn't get many newspapers to pick it up. Small audience. But a lot of people wrote to me by email because it was the birth of email back then. And they said, we like your comic when Dilbert's at home, you know, just hanging around at home, it's okay, but we love it when he's in the office. And I didn't know that. So it wasn't a workplace comic when I started it. But so many people told me that's what it needed to be, I just changed it and then it took off. So that was my big break, is just listening to what the audience wanted. Likewise, when I started talking about politics, mostly online, people wanted to hear me talk about persuasion in particular, and they wanted to hear it through that lens and they wanted to hear somebody they regarded as objective. Because I'm neither a Republican or Democrat, I could vote either way, depending on the individual. I make sure people know that so that I've got a little extra X factor. It's always helpful to have one thing about you that people remember and that's the thing that's unusual. I've got the Dilber thing going for me and I've got the persuasion angle and that makes me a little bit unique.

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Hey everybody, Ryan here.

Welcome back to the show. Today we're gonna be joined by Scott Adams. Scott Adams is an author, he is a podcaster, and he is the creator of the Dilbert comic strip, which is what he's most well known for. Now, I discovered the work of Scott after he wrote his best selling book, Win Bigley Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter. It's basically an analysis of the 2016 election through a persuasion filter. And ever since then I've been really fascinated with Scott's work and he's built a huge audience as a political analyst and as a blogger, despite the fact that that's not his background.

That.

And so this month, inside the 1%, our content is all about building and monetizing audiences. And as luck would have it, we were able to schedule this podcast with Scott Adams, somebody who has built a really sizable audience that is influential and that buys a lot of books and buys a lot of stuff. And he did it in a field where he didn't necessarily have the background to be considered credible in it. But he's, he's built it, he's developed it. So if you run a brand, if you have a podcast, if you have a social media following and you're wondering why you're not seeing the results that you want, why you're not growing as fast as you want, why you don't have as many raving fans as you want, Scott Adams is a really, really good example of somebody who has done it quickly and done it well. We dive into some of the strategies that he used to build that audience. We talk about how to be persuasive both publicly and privately, and we talk about some controversial predictions for both the election and the world over the next few years. This is a big deal to me. Cause Scott Adams has had a profound impact on the way that I think. And I hope you really enjoy this.

Chat with Scott Adams.

Hey, capitalists.

Before we jump into today's episode, if you've crossed seven figures and now you're stuck and you're frustrated and you're overworked and you're not seeing the same growth and excitement that you had when you started this thing, but you know that you're sitting on something special and it's driving you crazy that you can't get what is in your head out into the world. I know why you're stuck and I can help. Go over to capitalism.com 7. I've put together a write up about why you're stuck, how to get unstuck, and how I can help you in 2020 and beyond. Looking for exciting businesses with fun entrepreneurs who are frustrated because they know that they're capable of more. So go to capitalism.com7 and we'll get you growing again.

Well, hey, everybody, come on in here. It's time for the 1% podcast. And I know why you're here. You're here to have coffee with Scott Adams and it doesn't take much to participate. All you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a stein, a chalice, a tankard, a vessel of any kind. Raise it to your lips.

And go.

Sublime. Scott Adams, welcome to capitalism.com.

Thanks for having me. Good start.

It is. It is. Scott. People often ask me, as a podcaster, what podcast do I listen to? I've kind of narrowed it down to Tim Ferriss occasionally and Scott Adams almost every day.

So that's kind of all you need.

All the Rest of them I call filler.

The rest is just pure entertainment or distractions. So, Scott, I am heavily biased to listen to you because you single handedly have changed my mind politically, which is hard to do. I've changed my mind on religion in the past. I've changed my mind on politics on a variety of different times. But you've changed it most recently. And so I'm a little bit already primed to be persuaded to buy any of your books or to listen to your opinion on a variety of different topics. So if I could only ask you one thing, it would be this. Scott, how much of your persuasion that you do publicly is intentional and how much of it is just you being Scottish?

That is an excellent question. Thank you for that. And the answer is that I would say that learning to be persuasive is sort of like learning how to be polite. You don't necessarily consciously think of it once it becomes part of who you are. So there's a process where it goes from a conscious thing that you're doing to simply who you are. So at this point, when I communicate, I'm not consciously thinking, I'll, oh, I'll make them think best of sale. I'll give a visual image. I'll do this and that. Sometimes, sometimes I do. Depends on the situation, but most typically I'm just talking. And I've learned over the years to simply incorporate this technique somewhat seamlessly. Sort of like learning to type without looking. First you're thinking about it, but then you're thinking about what you're doing and you're not thinking about the technique anymore.

So it's basically become a second nature to you that it works into your existing language patterns, the way that you're communicating, probably publicly and privately. Is that correct?

Yeah, probably. The unintentional persuasion is maybe 80% as effective as if I were really bearing down and trying to do it as perfectly as I could. But it's always there. Yes.

Yeah. And where you are in your life and your career, how important is it to you to be persuasive using your public platform? You've told stories about using persuasion privately and to get ahead, but now you have this platform where news pundits actually watch your periscopes on a daily basis. I'm pretty sure you're the only reason Periscope still exists.

So you have this influence. Now. How much of that persuasion used on your public platform and what, what is the purpose that you would use it for?

Well, I would say there are two primary purposes One is education, because there's almost nothing that anybody does. Any human activity that doesn't work better if you're persuasive. So whether you're selling or you're just an engineer in a company, but you still have to sell your co workers, still have to sell the boss and maybe talk to customers. So whether you're dating or working or just, just whatever you're doing, it's just the most useful skill to add on top of whatever you already know. So I talk about skill stacks. That's a term I like to use, which is just intelligently combining a bunch of skills that work well together and communication of any kind stacks well with just about everything, except maybe a sport. But everything that we do in our social and work life, persuasion helps. Now that's the first is education. Secondly, I'm at a point in my life in which I don't need the money and I'm in a weird situation which I'm trying to take advantage of, which is people understand I'm not bought. So if they hear an opinion from me, they know it's because I thought it through. And I do have a greater good kind of motivation. I made my money, my life is good, I got what I need. And I'm at that point where I'm trying to figure out how to be more useful to the, the collective, if you will. So some of it's just trying to help people understand the situations in the world, the political world, with a persuasion filter, which helps you see things a little more clearly, I think.

Well, that was the biggest. Aha. Or a brain gasm as we call them here on capitalism.com. that was the biggest braingasm you gave me, which was once you see.

All of political theater as persuasion rather than a debate about facts, you look at it completely differently. And as soon as I had that insight, which you share publicly, regularly, it.

All of a sudden was easier for.

Me to take my own ego out of the situation, easier for me to take my own opinion out of it and just watch the ping ponging back and forth between politicians and why certain people do certain things. And all of a sudden it didn't seem so combative as much as it was just pure theater and entertainment. Yeah, here's a little bit of a superpower.

Here's a little persuasive visualization for you. Imagine a magician on stage. And as we know, the magician's trick involves getting you to look in the wrong place. And politics was sort of like that. If you're arguing about whether Something is true or false, whether the fact is true or false, you have fallen for the magician's trick. Because in the case of, let's say, Trump, if he wants you to think that immigration is the most important issue, the best way you can do it is throw out some facts that may or may not be true and then everybody has to talk about it. And the way our brains are wired is that the things we focus on the most become the most important. Not through any rational process, but it's just where your brain is focusing. So it just becomes important. So by the president using a non fact or even just a questionable fact, he can focus you where he wants you. Suddenly that rises in priority. And who's the guy who is most associated with that priority? President Trump. So once you understand that the magician is making you look at the facts for a purpose, not because they're true or they're false, then you start seeing it more clearly.

So that's a great lead in to something I wanted to ask you about. Loser Think. So if you are a member of the 1% in your box. This month you had a copy of Loser Think. We sent it out to every single one of you. Scott is one of my favorite living writers.

His book Win Bigly if you haven't read it, will just completely change the way that you view politics and all persuasion, really. But in Lose or Think, Scott, it's actually page 36, you have this sentence where you said we're all putting on an act and hoping that others buy it. And it's in context you're talking about if you feel a lack of confidence that you can kind of tune into the fact that everyone is sort of walking around warts and all, hoping that they're not judged and hoping to put the best picture of themselves forward. In this sentence, we're all putting on an act and hoping that others buy it and then realizing that your context of persuasion and how that plays into it. I was just hoping that you could comment on that to someone who is used to feeling that way in a room or just in life.

Well.

One of the things I say that's related to this and a little segue into it is that the worst advice anybody's ever given is be yourself. Be who you are. Be true to yourself. Literally the worst human advice ever given. You should be trying to become a better version of yourself. Because if we stayed ourselves, you know, we would basically be left behind. You know that the whole point of life is to get smarter and wiser and kinder and more Generous. If you're doing everything right, that's where you want to go. So you're in a constant process of reinventing yourself. And if you don't take that as a literal meaning, that if you don't understand that you are continually programming and then reprogramming who you are, then you're not going to understand life. And you'll be confused and you'll think everybody's doing a good job and you're not. But part of that programming is the learning that everybody's faking it. And I'm not sure when I first realized that. It definitely wasn't when I was a teenager. When I was a teenager, I would look at adults and say, wow, they have really got it together. And I don't know how I would ever learn enough to do a job that an adult does. And then I became an adult and I got my first job. And I thought, how in the world will I ever learn all of the things that you need to do to do this job? And my first job was a bank teller. It wasn't that hard. And of course I learned it in a few weeks. I'm fine.

That kept repeating. I kept thinking, yeah, but I couldn't do my boss's job. I mean, how would I ever learn all of that? And then you have your boss's job. You go, oh, took two weeks, I'm good.

And then it just keeps repeating. And you see, for example, your co workers who are exactly like you. And then somebody has to get promoted because you know there's an opening for the boss's job. And then your co worker who has nothing different from you in terms of their capabilities, their intelligence, their experience, they become the boss and they do fine, or at least as good as bosses can do. And so if you see it enough, you realize, wait a minute, everybody's faking. And not just some of the time. Everybody is faking all of the time. Now, we do get more confident, but part of that confidence is a combination of knowing you can fake it, plus actually learning the job and knowing what you're talking about. But once you learn that everybody's faking it, and everything's easier because you can walk into the room and say, oh, actors, I can act. I know how to act. In fact, I'll give you a technique. When I was in college, I was shy. I had trouble talking to any kind of adult power figure. But I had a classmate who was the opposite. He was 6 foot 4 and he could BS with anybody. The President of the United States you could walk up to him and just BS with him. And I tried to figure out how he could do that. And I finally learned he was sort of a theater guy, he liked theater, that he just acted. He would just play a role. He would just say, all right, if I were going to play the role of somebody who was confident and talking to an adult in power, what would that look like? And I would watch him do it and I'd say, I could do that. I can't do it naturally because I don't have those skills, but. But I can play the part of a guy who can do it. So I'd say, well, thank you, Mr. Jones. It's a great pleasure to meet you. I hope we can meet again. Let's keep in touch. And it's easy to know what to do if you think of yourself as an actor. Now. It's definitely a case of acting until it's real, so it becomes who you are in time. So I would say at this point in my life, I'm not thinking of it as acting, but I'm quite conscious of the fact that I've acquired the actors skills along with the Dale Carnegie tips on how to deal with people and kind of put it all together.

Yeah, I'm just realizing as you're saying this, how this has worked on me recently. And just 36 hours ago, we announced the most recent winner of the capitalism.com scholarship. We do a $25,000 scholarship for an entrepreneur who has kind of succeeded against all odds. And we gave it to someone who had every disadvantage thrown at her. And yet she still shows up with a smile, with confidence, with a can do attitude. And every day showed up and said, I'm gonna do this. There's an absolute confidence to her, which is what got her on our radar for the scholarship. And I'm just realizing that whether or not she really believed that, the fact that she showed up every day with that amount of confidence open up a door for her. And I'm kind of just realizing that that's how life works.

Yeah, Fake confidence can become real confidence. My mother gave me one of the best lessons as a kid. I just. This is such a vivid memory. Before she'd be preparing dinner and we kids would be home and she'd say, all right, kids, what vegetable do you want for dinner? We could have corn from a can or beans from a can. Do you want corn or beans from a can? And we'd usually say, I don't care because, you know, we would get the next one, the Next night I'd say, I don't care. And my mother would just stop everything. She just like, put the apron down and she'd say, make a decision. I'd be like, but I really don't care. It makes no difference to me. There's not even a slight difference in preference. And she would say, make a decision. And I was like, corn. And she'd go back and cook. And it was one of those profound experiences where you realize that the world is full of people who don't know quite what to do. And if you can be the one who even is pretending to have confidence, everybody will treat you like you're confident. And then you become confident. Sort of a circular feedback thing. So there's, there's very much a process where faking confidence is what makes it real. Because if you fake it and then things go well, you say, well, that worked out. And then the next time you're actually confident, you don't have to fake it the second time because you know it works out.

Yeah, you kind of carry this idea over later. In Loser Think, there's a section which you called Thinking Like a Leader. And you tip your cap to the idea that you popularized, which is systems versus Goals. And in this section of the book, you answered the question that I've wondered the most about you, which is how did you make this transition to having an online audience that trusts your opinion in what seems to be record time? It looks like kind of coming out of nowhere, you went from.

Just one of the most famous cartoonists in the world to having a very sizable online audience that is out actually influential. And you made this interesting statement in which you said you basically went wide and tried a bunch of different topics and approaches, and then you just looked at the data and narrowed in on that. And that the whole time you weren't necessarily confident in the approach. You didn't necessarily know what you were doing, you were just confidently showing up to it. And I was hoping you could comment a little bit on the approach that you took to building that audience.

So the context which is always missing when you hear stories of success. You know, you hear about somebody, hey, they started this company and they made a billion dollars, but the story never tells you all the things they tried that didn't work out. So the number one thing you need to know about me is my book, how to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big. I actually counted up the number of business related failures I had. Things that I'd put some extra effort into wasn't necessarily starting A business, but put some serious effort into. And there were over 30. Over 30 major business efforts that didn't work. And there were about, at the time, I think, three or four things that worked out splendidly. Now, could I have predicted which would be the three or four things out of the 30? The answer is no. Now, maybe in retrospect, I think I could because I'm smarter, but then I couldn't. So it was a very conscious decision to try lots of stuff that all had certain qualities. So it wasn't randomly trying stuff. It was trying things where, if it worked, it could get really big really fast. So if you're a cartoonist and you make one comic and people like it, it can get reproduced very quickly.

Scott, would you say that sentence again? It was focusing on the things that could get really big really fast.

So I picked things that wouldn't kill me if they didn't work. But if they did work, they had the quality that they could scale up really quickly. So, for example, if you had an invention, a patent, a piece of art, a piece of writing, they can be reproduced very quickly. Likewise with the periscope and the videos, they can be reproduced. So the first thing you need to know is that it's one of many things I tried and one of the ones that worked. Now, that's AB testing. If you want to use the phrases from the technology world, they say, let's test A and see how A does, and then we'll test B. And if B is better than A, we'll keep B. But then we keep testing. You're not done. Then you say, all right, let's try C. You see? Better than B. Okay, keep B, try D. And you never stop testing. So in my life, I'm never done experimenting, but a lot of the experiments don't work. So yesterday I did a live stream where I tried to do a guest and my technology didn't work and posted the whole thing, and there was no audio. I had to delete it. It was embarrassing. And at the end of it, I had gained 20,000 Twitter followers. It put me over 400,000 followers because it was Bill Pulte that I was doing my failed interview with, and he tweeted it out, and he has 2 million followers. A lot of them. Follow me. This is a perfect example of succeeding through failure. Complete, complete and utter failure of the thing I was trying to do. But I learned a whole bunch about streaming and things like that. Probably be useful later. And I got 20,000 followers on Twitter, which remain. So I came out ahead. So the point of that is that the universe rewards action. So if you can't do the right thing, I recommend do the wrong thing. Because doing the wrong thing will always attract advice. If you want people to tell you how to do something right, try doing it wrong in public. All the free advice you'll ever want.

Right.

And the only thing you have to learn is how to deal with the embarrassment, the shame of being wrong in public. Unfortunately, I've had so much practice, I do that effortlessly.

Yeah. One of my favorite quotes from the book was, if you can't figure out how to do a task the right way, do it the wrong way and see how much free advice you get along the way. That was beautifully said. I want to go a little bit deeper into this point because our theme this month at capitalism.com is building and monetizing audiences. In the Internet age, anyone can have an opinion, and seems like everyone does. And anyone can broadcast their opinion and everybody does. And then there are a few people, yourself included, who gain traction for those opinions and that gives them leverage. It's a huge asset to carry on throughout the rest of their lives. And I was, I'm curious if you've been able to either identify patterns among those who are influential or just in your own experience, among those who have been able to successfully build a following while a lot of other people are doing working just as hard at a bunch of different things but not seeing the growth of the audience. How would you comment on that?

Well, the. And we'll go back to some themes which we already talked about, which is good because it'll reinforce them. The talent stack explains so much. All right, so if I may, I'm talking to you and it's obvious that you have the technology understood because we had an effortless process of on ramping me to the. The technology. You made it easy, which makes me know that you understand it. You're good looking, which is great for a video thing. You're a certain age. You're a certain age, which is the perfect age for this medium. Obviously, you speak well, you have a background in the field that you talk about. So it's not an accident if you do well. It's because you combined exactly the right set of talents to get what you're getting now. So that's the main thing. Then the other thing is the continual of testing. Some people are going to get lucky and on the first moment out there are topics people like. And it won't necessarily because they were geniuses. They probably just got lucky but if you're like me, you try a topic and see what happens. And if you can find that your audience wants you to talk about certain things, then do it. Now in my case, I always let the audience tell me what my job is. I don't do it the other way around. When I did Dilber, I put it out there and it really was a failure in the first couple of years. It didn't get many newspapers to pick it up. Small audience, but a lot of people wrote to me by email because it was the birth of email back then. And they said, we like your comic. When Dilbert's at home, you know, just hanging around at home, it's okay, but we love it when he's in the office. And I didn't know that. So it wasn't a workplace comic when I started it. But so many people told me that's what it needed to be, I just changed it and then, then it took off. So that was, that was my big break, is just listening to what the audience wanted. Likewise, when I started talking about politics, mostly online, people wanted to hear me talk about persuasion in particular, and they wanted to hear it through that lens and they wanted to hear somebody they regarded as objective. Because I'm neither a Republican or Democrat, I could vote either way, depending on the individual. I make sure people know that so that I've got a little extra X factor. It's always helpful to have one thing about you that people remember and that's the thing that's unusual. I've got the Dilber thing going for me. I've got the persuasion angle and that makes me a little bit unique.

So Scott, you're touching on a really interesting.

Paradox here, which is from the outside.

You'Re in amazing shape, especially for among your peers. From the outside, looks like you succeed at everything that you touch. You have several best selling books, you have the most famous comic strip in the world, you're on news stations all over the country, you influence people in their political thought. If you're public about your relationship and you've done great, Scott, good work, you've been financially successful, you have successful startups, it's easy to look at all of the wins and say, Scott just has something figured out. And yet you're saying, well, actually there's a lot of failure behind all those successes and there was even failure along the way of striking those things that were within the context of your talent stack. Just because it met your talent stack doesn't mean that there wasn't failure at the very Beginning. So what I'm basically hearing you say is that you try a lot of different things. Some of them have enough early signs of success to let you know that you should keep doing it. And some of them you cut really quickly.

Is that a fair summary?

Yeah. And I have some tricks for knowing when something's going to work so when to bail out and when to when not. And the trick is this, that even if you produce a bad product, and I would say that the Dilber comic was a bad product on day one, meaning that the first year or two of Dilber comics, even by my own standard, were, like, not so good. But despite that, there were something like, I don't know, 1%, 10% of the readers, some small number who are crazy about it, I mean, just loved it. And that's actually the thing that tells you you have something and would consume it. Now, take cell phones, for example. The first cell phones were the size of a brick, and they had bad batteries, and there was nobody who could call, and they dropped the call. And they were basically as close to worthless as you could get. But people wanted them and they wanted them badly. So you could tell even with a bad product that this was going to be the future. The first computers were terrible, but you could tell they had the X factor. So if you find something that people will use in its terrible state, then you've really got a product. You remember the first smartphone, the iPhone. And I had it on the AT&T network. And at the time, you couldn't make a phone call with it. You could not make a phone call with the iPhone on the AT&T network without it dropping. So I had a phone that couldn't make phone calls, and I kept it for years. I don't know how long, two years or whatever, because it was still better. You know, there was something about it that told me it was the future. There was no doubt I would never go back. So look for something that's popular even in its worst first form. The mistake is to say, you know, people don't like it in this version, but if I fix this, they're gonna like it. Then you fix it, and it's the same. You say, well, one more thing. I've gone down that path myself, so I recognize it from experience. So look for people to hate the ugly form of it, or they're never going to love the beautiful form.

So what I'm hearing you say is when you're starting something new or when something is you're looking to still get traction at the beginning of something, you know you have a success or a winner in your back pocket. If there is at least a small group of people who love it in its current form.

Yes.

As it improves, they'll probably love it even more and continue to bring others with them.

Yes. With one other thing to look for to see if you've got something. I look for the body to be involved as opposed to the brain. The brain is involved. If you say, hey, friend, what do you think of my product? And your product says, that's a great product right there. Great job. You should do something with that. I think that'll go far. You have nothing.

Literally no information was exchanged because it's your friend. Can't trust him and they don't know anything about anything. Your friend is no genius. So if somebody just says, here's my opinion of your thing. You have nothing. Now let me give you the other example. Your friend. You say, hey, friend, what do you think of my product? They say, can I hold that? They take it with their body, take it out of your hand, and they start playing with it. Now you have their body involved. Now, if that's the only thing you get, that's not much. But if they say, do you mind? I know this is asking a lot, but I have to show this to my brother. I mean, he's got to see this. Can I borrow this just for an hour? Now, that's the body, that's not the mind. Now, in the Dilbert example, people would cut out the strip and mail it around physically take out scissors. They would combine them into books that they made themselves, organizing them into topics. So they would cut them out and make little booklets. Now, when you see that, that is a home run before it's even a home run, because people are using their bodies to respond to it. Always look for the body, never the opinion.

Yeah, that's beautiful. Because in Today's World.

At capitalism.com, we work with mostly Internet entrepreneurs, getting that kind of feedback is usually done in the form of numbers. How many sales, how much search volume, how many clicks? What's the cpa? What's your. It's all numbers and data, and it's really hard to find when you have that raving ass fan just looking at numbers. I'm curious if you could speak to that at all when you're working with in a digital world. How do you get that type of feedback that you're describing from content or product or something online?

Well, you don't get those numbers unless somebody used their body. So in other words, I would say if somebody's just making a comment on Twitter or something, that's probably still just the mind being involved. But by the time somebody has downloaded an app and done some searches or used it a few times, their thumbs and their body are involved. So I think stats actually do tell you what their bodies were doing. So it's the same thing.

That's interesting.

I'm reeling at this idea of identifying where there is a lot of movement, even in its original state, because I know for me, even with someone who has been an entrepreneur for a decade, that I still kind of get married to my ideas, that I still find the temptation to fix what's broken rather than to scale what is getting life. And.

Is it an automatic thing for you to think like that, or is that a trained response?

Well, I'm not sure you'd want to separate. That's almost like a problem you wouldn't want to fix because the fix would break you worse than the problem. Meaning that whatever it is that made you an entrepreneur is also the thing that won't let you. Let you let go.

Tell me more, Scott.

Meaning there's something baked into the personality of the aggressive entrepreneur who doesn't want to quit, and you don't want to get rid of the quit. So you got to be really clear about when it's time to quit. And I would say to use your example, and of course every situation is unique, but if I had a product that I said, here, friend, see if you can use it, and they didn't know what button to push, I would go back and fix that because they couldn't even use it. But if they're using it, fine, and it's still not exciting them. They don't use it twice. It's time to walk away, probably.

Scott, I would like to hear your opinion on an idea around this world of where we're building personal brands and audiences.

In the Internet entrepreneurial world. The way that a lot of people will turn that into a business is by selling courses or masterminds or products to that group of people. And it seems to me like none of those individuals get a lot of influence, at least not the influence that a Joe Rogan or a Tim Ferriss or Scott Adams has. And then on the other, by the way, did you like how I just lumped you in with Joe Rogan and Tim Ferriss? Scott?

I think that was very complimentary to those two guys.

Well done. So you haven't done any of kind of the traditional.

Internet way of scaling a personal brand. But you have books and you have a large following and it looks from the outside like you really enjoy your life. So is there anything that you've done or approached differently when you decided to go all in on building a brand and an audience that some people from the outside might not see?

Well, I would say the most important thing to building a brand is how quickly people can understand it and does it fit into some model that they already have. So if people can explain you with one sentence, you probably have a brand. If they have to talk about it for a while, then you're not quite there. I'll use my perpetual examples of comics. One of the things that makes a great comic strip is that you can explain it in a sentence. So if I said to you, what's Garfield about? You'd say, fat, lazy cat.

Done. Right. If I say, what's Dilbert about? Office worker. Bad boss. Done. What's Kathy about? Neurotic single woman. Done. So those. It's not a coincidence that those brands were successful because we need really simple.

This is what President Trump does persuasively, keeps it simple and you really can't. It's hard to overstate how important simplicity is and having it map into something that people are already thinking or have a model for already. Because if it's a brand new thing, it could be amazing. But people don't have anything to stick it to. Like their mind is already primed to hold that as a memory and put it in its context. So it should be familiar, simple, and.

Really talk to a universal, say, type of person or type of feeling.

How has that applied to you and the growth of your brand and your audience?

Interestingly, I'm in a brand, let's say, transition period, so you're catching me for the perfect time to ask this question. So I have intentionally set as my end state to be the most credible public pundit. I hate the word pundit, but I'll use it for myself. And by credible, I mean simply ability to explain things. And also not influenced by money or bad influences from other people. Nothing hidden in my influence. So that's a long term process in which I just have to keep doing that. And indeed, that's what people respond to the most. When people send me a compliment, it's usually almost exactly those words. You know, something like, you're the only independent voice that has any credibility.

What was the reason or the impetus behind wanting to go that direction? That's a big. The big switch from where you were eight or 10 years ago. So was that pure enjoyment, or did something else inspire that?

Well, all of the political stuff was accidental, and I took advantage of it, meaning that I was just writing a blog about whatever I felt like, and it wasn't getting much attention. It was just something I enjoyed doing. And I wrote one blog post about then candidate Trump's persuasion talents. It became massively viral, because during an election, you're always looking for a new way to look at the familiar because everybody's covering the same stuff. So it became massively viral. And then I thought, well, I guess I'll write another one, you know, on that related topic. And that became huge. And all the ones I did on the same topic would get, you know, five times the traffic of anything else I was doing. And I enjoyed doing it. I thought, oh, here's. Here's a situation where I can use my background as a trained hypnotist and someone who studied persuasion for years. I'll just see if there's an audience for this. So it's just one of the things I tried, and there was a huge audience for it.

So, Scott, here's what I'm kind of processing in the background while you're talking. We're all hearing and speaking from our own context, and minus is kind of what you described as. I feel like I'm in a transition in my own brand, and I'm back in that period of testing and trying different things to see what I enjoy. And the advice that I've kind of kept in the back of my mind came from how to fail at almost everything and still win big. The idea of using your energy as a guide, using your energy as the indicator of whether or not something is a good thing for you to continue. What I'm hearing you say as you're talking about your transition to talking about political topics is that you were just energized by something that also seemed to resonate with a core group of people, and that was your sign that it was the start of something new and you were okay with it sucking at the beginning or being ugly or messy. And because it gave you energy and because there was good initial feedback, is that a fair summary of the overall transition?

Yeah. I wish I had said more about how much I personally enjoyed it, because what I look for, at least in creative projects, is I look for a project where after I start it, I'm the one putting the work into it. I start the project, I write the first page of a book, I put together a proposal, I do some work, but after that, the project has to drag you or it's not going to work. If you're pushing the entire time, there's something wrong with what you're doing. It's just not what you're meant to be doing. But if you can get it started and then it just grabs you by the throat and starts dragging you. And that's what this political persuasion writing stuff did. Because after I wrote the first few articles, I would wake up at four in the morning and think, is it time to get up yet? Because I want to write another article. I mean, I enjoyed it so much. I like. I liked what it did to people. I liked how they reacted to it. I liked how it opened their mind, it felt useful. And I'm at that point in my life where I'd rather be useful than make money.

Yeah, I work with a lot of entrepreneurs who feel that at the beginning of their business, Scott, where they can't wait to get up and start doing something new, and they're excited by the growth of something and then it plateaus and they don't have that feeling anymore and it becomes a grind. How do you advise people? Once something was fun and now it's a grind. Can you get that spark back, or is it time to try something new?

Well, it's pretty hard. You know, even in cartooning, everybody would say that's like the best job in the world if you can do it. But even I get super bored about drawing Dilbert's head over and over again. You know, 10,000 comics, I've probably drawn Dilbert's head, I don't know, 40,000 times, something like that. So I would love to never do that again. I mean, if I could stop today and never draw Dilbert again, I would be the happiest guy in the world. Fun, you know, Here. So I get an art assistant to help me with some of the, you know, the parts that I don't want to spend as much time on. And I just try to keep it fresh. I just try to inject something fresh in there. Now, to be honest, if cartooning were not easy and people didn't like it and it wasn't already well established, I wouldn't keep doing it. I mean, I don't do it for fun. It just pays the rent and it allows me to do the other stuff I like.

So that's interesting. So there are things in your life that become monotonous and boring that don't get you deliriously excited, but you keep them because they serve a purpose and you. You get your excitement in other areas.

Yeah. I have often explained to young people that the reason that you get paid for working is that you didn't like it. If you liked working, it would be called entertainment. Yeah. Nobody would pay you for doing what you wanted to do all day. It's. You get paid because it's unpleasant. So don't look for the job that's fun because they're not going to pay you for that one.

I don't know why you saying that just gave me so like a, like, relief. I think it's because there's so much idea in when things are, when things are popping, they should feel energizing and easy. And sometimes we forget that half of pretty much anything is going to suck. There's a downside to pretty much everything.

And you just saying that for whatever reason gave me permission to do some things that have been in my head. So thank you for that. Scott, I want to ask you about the. Towards the end of the book, in Loser Think, you talk about the golden age, which you talk a lot about in your periscope. But there was one specific part that you mentioned that I wanted to highlight, and it was the idea of the end of unemployment. And we are just.

Right in the middle when we're recording this, of a new election cycle. Things like universal basic income and robots taking over the world was a topic among the proverbial Yang gang, which I liked to push against and throw little pokes at from here from time to time, because I don't think that we should fear automation or the loss of jobs. And you seem to kind of reflect that in this section about the end of unemployment. Would you comment on that.

At the moment? Because the economies of the world are so advanced, the only thing that keeps you from getting a job is knowing where the job is and being able to go there. Because there are people who want to hire pretty much anybody who can walk and talk, but they would have to know that job is there. They'd have to figure out how to get there. And it's inevitable that we're going to see apps and systems that close that gap. So. And I hypothesize about the following app. Imagine an app where you're an unemployed person and you can just register the app and you can get other people to help you make the connection. So let's say you want to get a job in the oil fields in Nebraska, but you're a person who doesn't have any assets and you live in Arizona. You go on the app and somebody says, you know, I'm going to be driving to Nebraska, come along. And somebody else says, you know, you can be my roommate, just pay half price. You can stay in Nebraska with me and I'll introduce you to the boss. You can do your interview over the app by FaceTime. And suddenly every bit of friction that kept the person who wants the job from the actual job goes away. So in my view of the golden age, one of just one of the many good things we have coming forward is that the robots will be doing the boring stuff, the humans will be doing stuff that's a little more interesting. Probably our cost of a good quality life will go way down because a robot will build your house and take care of stuff and our health will be better, etc. So I think we that if you had a normal low end job, you could have a spectacular life in the age of robots and you'll have just the job you want, wherever you want, you'll be able to find it and go to it.

When people bring up the fear of automation and jobs going away, I like to remind them that one of the effects of having a lot of jobs automated is that prices will come way, way down. And so when you have a much higher cost of living and you probably need fewer dollars to be able to afford that higher cost of living, would you agree with that analysis?

Well, I'm not sure I followed what you just said, but I would say that the robots should bring down the cost of a quality life. Correct. To the point where if the robot takes you a good job, it won't make that much difference. You could have a spectacular life at half the pay.

Right. You mentioned the cost of housing coming down because we can basically 3D print houses at this point. And if we have robots producing everything, everything is pretty much cheap and almost free. When that is the case.

Scott, I would like to, while I've got you, I'd like to get from your perspective and your filter some thoughts on current events. Are you comfortable with that?

Sure. Absolutely.

All right, great. So we both lost small amounts of money betting on Kamala Harris to win the nomination for the Democrats. Where do you see this election cycle going next?

Well, I have not given up on my Kamala Harris prediction.

Tell us more.

Because it looks like whoever gets nominated for the Democrats is going to be old. They are absolutely going to need somebody young. Whoever gets nominated, let's say it's Bernie Bloomberg or Biden. If you've got an old white guy running in the Democrat party, that's Just not going to be popular. They're going to need to add some balance in the vice president. So I think Kamala Harris is the likely vice president pick for at least Biden, possibly Bloomberg, certainly not Bernie. But my guess is you can have a brokered convention, you're going to have Biden picked as the candidate. He's going to pick Kamala Harris and he's going to get coronavirus before election day. So if he asked me the path to a Kamala Harris.

Effectively being the president, even if Biden doesn't get coronavirus, and by the way, I'm not even joking about that, I believe all the candidates will have coronavirus because Trump has the advantage that he could stay in the White House and give rallies and not shake any hands if he wants to and he can still win. Whereas the other candidates, they kind of have to get out there and the amount of exposure they're going to get between now and November, if you can keep these 70 plus year old guys from getting coronavirus, I'd be impressed. Frankly, I wouldn't expect it. I think the they'll probably all have it and you could have some serious health ramifications because of their age.

So that's a beautiful transition into what I want to ask you about next, which is it seems that half of the people with an opinion say that we are overestimating coronavirus and that it's no bigger than the flu. And then you have the other half saying that we are far underestimating its effects and it's much more severe than we're giving it credit for. Where do you stand in the analysis?

I'm a hybrid of that. I think it's worse than we think and it'll still be no big deal. Meaning that.

And I use this analogy or story, if on a normal year, how many people would you know personally who are over, let's say the age of 80 who would die just from normal causes in a normal year? You probably know several. Yeah, you know, it'd be your friends, grandparents and that sort of thing. Well, suppose that number went from seven a year, just an average, to nine. Would you even know, like if nobody had ever told you the coronavirus existed, if we'd never been able to identify it as a special virus, you would know that 80 year olds die because they always do and this year there were nine and you wouldn't even think about it. So it could be way worse than we think, meaning it could be 10 times more deadly than regular virus. And still you might not notice if People weren't telling you it was out there. You would just notice that you had, you know, your certain age. So you get, you get it and it's like a bad cold. And you get a cold every year. You know, who doesn't get a cold? Everybody gets cold. So you wouldn't even know what happened. So it could be way worse than we think. And if we hadn't been talking about it, might not notice. Now, of course, all bets are off if the pictures we're getting out of Iran and China are even close to being realistic, seeing people dropping on the streets and stuff. But I'm just not buying those as being necessarily representative of what's happening. It doesn't seem to be.

Now, we're hearing a lot of analysis about coronavirus and its effect on the economy. And I would say that it seems to me like there's a lot of loser think being applied when it comes to really any economic analysis. But certainly right now, when you have coronavirus being the thing that makes the stock market swing 5000 points up or down, and I would like your analysis. Are we using loser think in our analysis or something else going on in the overall effect of coronavirus on the economy?

Well, by way of context, I have a degree in economics and MBA from a top business school. So I tell people this because they see me as an economist or they see me as a cartoonist and would lose all credibility for what I'm going to say next. Economics is a psychology engine. So the only thing that drives the economy is what we think will happen tomorrow. So the coronavirus broke. It just broke the economy. We don't see it yet because there's some inertia. You know, things carry on, but the economy is 100% broken at the moment because the psychology is all wrong. But the President talked and he said that Apple Computer, just using one example, says their production is already back online. And I checked immediately after that and the stock market started recovering. Now, here's the way I would frame this so you can feel good about it. If it's true that, let's say 2% or whatever the number is, are actually dying from the virus, they're mostly people who are compromised, but those are not the people who go to work. The people who are going to work are mostly not 80 years old and mostly not with a serious health problem. So there will be a point, and I think we're there, where the risk of destroying the world economy is going to kill way more people than the 2% that we know are going to die from the virus. And I think you're going to see the Chinese say, you know, we're going to have to make an adult decision. And the adult decision is do we consciously kill 2% of the people who are going to get this virus and it's going to be millions. In order to save whatever tens or hundreds of millions would have died because of a worldwide depression. And I don't think it's any, it's not even close. The depression would be far more deadly, far more deadly. Especially if it started any adventurous wars or anything else. Mass starvation, that sort of thing. So I think the Chinese are going to make the adult decision, which is one of the things you gotta love about China. I'm a big China critic, but they are run by engineers and they are cold blooded in the best possible way. Meaning that if they need to make the adult decision, they will let 2% of their population die to get the factories back online. And I think we're just about there.

So would you.

I think what you're saying is that right now there's a little bit of a containment philosophy which is shutting down the economy to try and protect the people from not getting sick. And what you're saying is that's gonna do more damage than letting the virus run its course. And eventually we're gonna wake up to that reality.

Did I hear containment is good as a general concept? To slow it down and then figure out what's what and maybe do some extra things to protect our seniors especially. But once the seniors are protected, you're gonna have to go back to life as usual because the alternative is way worse than having a virus out there. And that's global depression.

Yeah, makes sense. Well, Scott, you have a persuasion filter on the world which allows you to make some sometimes bold predictions that sometimes work out deliriously well for you. What is your boldest and or most controversial opinion going into the next year or so?

Peace in the Middle East. That's pretty bold. And here's the thinking behind that.

The characters who are the primary problem is basically Iran. So Iran, the entire Middle east used to be a pit of problems. It was just all problems. But for whatever reason, we've got to the point where it's down to one person who may or may not already have the coronavirus.

Now the Ayatollah.

A lot of his top advisors are starting to get the coronavirus. I think several have been reported. That means there's a lot more. Now whether or not the Ayatollah is taken out by the Coronavirus, or he just ages out, that's gonna change. It's not a situation that can last forever. And because the coronavirus is going to be the last punch in the Iranian economic belly.

I think they're ready for change in a way they never have been. And it's just the last part that needs to be fixed, because if the Iranians take away their support of their various proxies, Hezbollah, et cetera, that's all gonna calm down quite a bit. And interestingly, the proposed peace plan, the Israeli Palestinian peace plan, has a fascinating aspect to it, which is that you don't need both sides to agree. And I've never seen a peace plan like that before where Israel can say, here's what we'd like you to agree with. But on the other hand, if you don't, it's not going to make any difference to us. We're just going to treat it. We're just going to treat it like it's the reality. We own this land. If you want, you can own this land, we'll give it to you. But you got to, you know, you got to do some other things for us. So I think Israel doesn't need to push it. They don't need to wait. They don't even need an agreement. They can just go on with their lives and say, we tried. Here's our plan. It's reasonable to them.

Keep going, Scott?

Well, so that's my boldest prediction, is that we've never been closer to a major peace in the Middle East. Only a fool would predict that it would actually happen. But I will be that fool for you. I will be your fool.

I appreciate it, Scott. My last question for you is this.

Assuming that I'm in agreement with you, that we're kind of coming into this golden age in which we really have full choice, and we probably have world peace coming, which I know some people don't agree with, but I don't see any convincing argument why we would not have world peace. We're coming into this era in which we can be, do or have anything that we want. How do you focus in a world that has infinite abundance? And where do you derive meaning?

You know, my friend Naval Ravikant, you've probably heard of him, one of the most famous names in Silicon Valley, and otherwise.

I'm sorry, what was the question? I started thinking about naval and I forgot the question.

Oh, yeah, and of course, when you say naval, I think of my good friend Kamal, his brother, so. And I was distracted by the picture of his White hair in my mind. But the question was, in a world where we have infinite abundance, how do you focus and where do you find meaning?

So what Naval was saying is that, you know, there was a time in our history where being strong and healthy was the main thing, and then there's a kind of a current time where being smart is the important thing for success. And he points out that in our. Maybe we're already there, but in our near future, ability to resist addiction will be the primary determinant of success. And that goes to your question. When you can have everything from sex to porn to drugs to, you name it, how do you survive? That's an almost unsurvivable problem. A lot of people know my stepson died about a year ago from drugs and fentanyl, and he could not. So even before that happened, it was obvious to me that he was not designed for this world. He was designed for a world in which he didn't have those temptations, which would have been anytime 200 years ago. So I think that that's the main thing is that some people are going to have to learn how to resist that temptation where they just don't have a chance.

Well, Scott, you're the only person that I tune into on a daily basis, so whatever you're doing is working because I am addicted to my dopamine hit of the day.

As you should be.

As I should be. And I am. So thanks for what you do. You have had a meaningful impact on my life through both your. Your work, through the written word in the books that you write, and also with your periscopes and your podcasts. If you're a member of the 1%, then loserthink is in your box this month. If you're not a member, you should go buy it. Go get the audible version, because listening to Scott talk is hypnotic, but I have the physical version as well. And I would also highly recommend that you grab a copy of Winn Bigley, which had a huge impact in the way that I view the world. Scott, it's been on my dreams list to hang out with you for a little over a year now. So thank you for crossing a thing off my bucket list. It's a pleasure to hang out with you today.

Thanks for having me. Your questions are excellent, by the way. I must compliment you. You do this really well, and I'm sure you're going to be doing amazing at this.

Thanks. Thanks very much, Scott.

All right, take care.

My biggest takeaway from this time with Scott was the fact when he talked about how we call it work because we don't want to do it, and that's why people pay us for it. Otherwise it would just be entertainment. That was really a big aha for me because it made me realize that the kind of the idea in my brain about it should all be fun, it should all be easy, might just be my own mental noise and maybe I need to be be okay with some things not being optimal all the time.

And in fact, that's what he said.

Was the secret to his success in growing an audience is the fact that he was willing to do things that kind of sucked for a while, just to see what gave him energy, what he enjoyed, and what was moving in the marketplace. So often when we're building a business or we're building a following, we can either get caught in this rat race of pushing rocks uphill or pursuing only pleasure without any system behind it. And what I thought Scott did well was blend those two worlds together. It should be enjoyable and it should have feedback in the marketplace.

That's when you know you have a winner.

It's a blend of both being enjoyable and energizing and also being valuable to a group of other people. You have to have both. And sometimes it requires you to do things like like work to get there, which is so often overlooked in our little community. I so enjoyed this time. I hope you enjoyed it half as much as I enjoyed bringing it to you. And if you like this stuff, please make sure you're subscribed to the 1% podcast and you share it with somebody.

Else who would find benefit of it.

Hope to see you on the next episode. Thanks for listening to capitalism.com Guys, girls.

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