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. 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 going to talk to me or not. It was great. I loved your Davos stuff. You actually said something amazing. You were like, I don't even want to be here. I'd rather be at home with my kids. And I thought that was awesome. But what I want to 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 out of 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 have, 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 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're worth $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.

That's well 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 say, 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.

Man, I saw— I saw him on 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.

And he was like, oh, we have some Wonder Bread. They're like, Wonder Bread? He's like, 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, 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. Uh, 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 have this perspective flip in your 40s. You know, if you're influential to a bunch of guys today, who was that for you? Like who influenced you to just 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 is 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 angels singing and bright lights. By the way, I don't think men should be in the delivery room. It's fucking gross. Bring, 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?

We talked about this. I decided that once I got to a number from 25 to 45, maybe 48. I did nothing but work. I did nothing but work. I wasn't a good person. I wasn't going outta my way to save the whales. I wasn't investing in relationships. I wasn't, I'm just like, when I, when again, going back to when my mom got sick and I couldn't take care of her, I was so traumatized by a capitalist society that doesn't protect people who are underinsured. I'm like, the only thing I can control is how hard I work. And you can't decide to be economically secure, but you can decide how much of your own time and energy. I don't remember anything from the age of 25 to 45 other than working. There was like a couple trips to Hawaii, I think. But other than that, I don't remember anything but working. But I decided, all right, I've, if I get to this number, and the problem is your number keeps going up. And we talked about this, I think our last podcast, I said, when I hit this number, I'm done. And I'm gonna do two things. Whenever I meet with my financial advisors, and I do this once a year, they tell me, this is your net worth. And if it's above that number, which it has been the last 12 years, 'cause it's been an amazing economy, I do one of two things with the incremental number above that. I either spend it, I love to spend money, I'm great at it. I am so good at spending money. I spend money like a '50s gangster just diagnosed with ass cancer. I am living large and I love it. Or two, and then anything above that, I give away. And I don't do it 'cause I'm philanthropic. I do it 'cause it makes me feel masculine and American.

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 come?

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

I mean, you are so weird.

The best was I was on Ben's, I was on Ben Stiller's podcast and I said that and he was 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 fought and beat prostate cancer. Anyways.

Did he spend money lavishly when he had it?

I don't know what his approach to money is, but I think that, yeah, I think a finite nature of life or a 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. 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?

Uh, 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, uh, 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 wanna belch that much shit into the air, so you go a 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 tax 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? 'Cause 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 I'm still the same fucking douchebag.

What about something that was, that's a good way to spend that's below the PJ, uh, 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.

Uh, the 3-month-old is actually easier to travel than the 2-year-old. Zero to three is awful. It gets better. You're, you're no use. Your job is to be supportive of your wife and make money. That's it. You add no value. You'll pretend to like it. You'll come on podcasts and say, oh, I love it. She did the cutest. It's awful. And keep them away from a large body of water. That's your entire job right now. And then at about age 3, they become less awful. And then about from like 4 to 14 is the golden decade. Oh, do everything. Go. I mean, again, these are incredible stories of privilege. But even if you don't have money, take your kid. The best week I've had in probably the last 3 years, I did a college tour with my son. We planned it out together using AI. Should we go to Indiana? Should we go to Wash U? Should we go to Michigan State? What if we go to, if we go to Michigan, can we see a football game? If we go to UNC, can we see a basketball game? I mean, we did 9 schools in 9 days and it was just, it was just amazing. And But, uh, take time with your partner, take them somewhere cool and amaze— spend— there's a ton of research on this. People overestimate the amount of happiness they'll get from things, and they underestimate the amount of happiness they'll get from experiences. In sum, drive a Hyundai and take your husband to Africa.

That's awesome. You, um, you had, um, a pretty bold, uh, thought last time that you were on. I think you said something where you, uh, you predicted that America's decade, the next decade for America is gonna 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?

Yeah, I'm selling down my American stocks mostly because I'm diversifying because I don't want to lose. I've lost all— I've been rich 3 times, which means I've lost it twice. I can't go back. I'm not— you guys are young and have good hair. I'm neither of those things. I can't make it back again. So I'm diversifying. And if you just look at the cycle of American markets or the global markets, typically The US outperforms for 8 years, then emerging markets outperform for 8 years. It goes back and forth. We've been outperforming emerging markets for 17 years. I still believe the markets are cyclical. The Buffett Index, stock market valuation versus GDP, he likes it at about 90%. It's at 210%. The S&P is trading at historic highs. 97% of the time, the S&P has traded at lower valuations relative to earnings. So it's not a criticism of America. I just think America is an asset. The rest of the world is an asset. There's America as an asset, everything, every public company in America, every public company outside of America, they're equally priced right now. They're both, you can own every public company in America for $100, or you can own every public company outside of America for $100. What do you think is the better value right now?

I mean, that's a leading question, but I would have 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 in our podcast? And we went and looked if they're 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 off 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 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 Wagovi, but we'll go with the notion you're not.

You just gathered a new system.

Sure. You just gathered a new system to me. By the way, I don't take ED drugs, just so you know. I don't, I absolutely, I don't know what you're talking about. I don't, I don't take, I don't take Viagra before it's go time every fourth Sunday during the summer solstice when my partner agrees to have sex with me. I absolutely don't take Viagra. Anyways, let me ask you this then more, more broadly. If someone is on a GLP-1 and they're using AI all the time, what do you think has a bigger impact on their life?

For sure, the GLP-1.

The fastest way to deficit reduction If I could be president for a day or king for a day and had a magic wand, mandatory national service. Let me say that right now. $25 an hour minimum wage. But the third thing I would do, I would put out the mother of all RFPs to Novo Nordisk, Eli Lilly, and say, I need a billion doses of GLP-1s. And then I would distribute it for free to every rural household in America. And I would take healthcare costs from $13,000 to $6,500 and boom, we have a deficit solved. GLP-1 is the most transformative technology of the last 20 or 30 years. It's the biggest thing since GPS is the way I see it.

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.

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. They're— 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, basically 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, 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.

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

Oh, better, much better.

So, so this is—

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've brought 500 million people out of poverty into the middle class. 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, you don't fall into one category. Why would you do that?

Because every fiscal policy we've made over the last 50 years is to transfer money from people Ari's age to people my age. We have slowly but surely, old people have figured out a way to vote themselves more money. And the average 70-year-old is 72% wealthier than they were 40 years ago. And the average 25-year-old is 42% less wealthy. And what do you know? Young people aren't having kids and are fed up with America. We are constantly overinvesting in seniors.

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? 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 out of 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, but Governor Newsom likes me.

You're talking about things that, uh, me and Sam don't know about, so we're going to shift it to things we understand. Okay, so, um, 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?

It's a really helpful— the first thing that comes to mind is third places. I think you're going to see— you're already seeing a massive uptick. And unfortunately, it manifests itself because there's a monopoly, Ticketmaster, in ticket prices to go see Taylor Swift or, you know, whoever it is. But I think third places— I think we need more bars. I think we need more sports leagues. I think we need, you know, putt-shack, Wave Garden, Topgolf. I think we should provide subsidies to third places. I also think we need to unlock— I think developers in the US, I think you're going to see a huge countercyclical movement against NIMBY laws and that the government will probably come out with subsidies. Rent control makes no fucking sense. That just makes housing more expensive because you limit supply. We need— instead of drill, baby, drill, it should be build, baby, build. I think the development companies are going to get government-sponsored subsidies to encourage them to build more. And we're gonna start doing away with NIMBY laws. That's what they, what they've done in Minneapolis, what they've done in Austin. But housing has gotten way too expensive for young people for the entrance. And I think that being, if you were to invest in developers right now or great third places where people meet, I think that's a way to make money. Unfortunately, I hate to say it, the guys who are gonna clean up here, are the guys tapping into young men's worst instincts. You're gonna see these speculation markets boom. Gaming is out of fucking control because if you're a 19-year-old dude in a French class at Cal State Northridge, it'd just be more fun to bet on whether the next pitch is gonna be 90 miles an hour or greater. The most profitable companies are gonna be the ones tapping into an immature prefrontal cortex of an American male. So unfortunately, the way to make money off the loneliness epidemic is probably Meta because they're exploiting it in terms of how to solve it. I think that's more public policy. I'd like to think there's a great way to make money doing it, but unfortunately all the profit incentives around making young men lonelier and lonelier.

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

No, I'm a member of all of them. I go to all of them. I'm a— my general investment philosophy is the following. The sexier it is, I want to join. I won't get near it with a check. A friend of mine is opening a members club in downtown Manhattan for musicians and artists. Sounds fucking amazing. I went, great opening party, people. I need to be the oldest, least attractive person wherever I am, then I know I'm at the right place. And this was that. So I join, I'll join it. He asked me to be an investor. I'm like, no way, no way. Another friend of mine is starting a SaaS platform for healthcare maintenance scheduling. Working there sounds like I want to put a gun in my mouth. Take my money. The more boring and less sexy an investment is, that's where you invest. The other shit you consume, but you don't invest in it. Your return on your invested capital is inversely correlated to how sexy and cool an industry sounds.

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.

You're being generous. It was digital benchmarking where we used software and scraping tools to aggregate 1,200 data points on a brand and then we'd compare them to their peers.

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

Oh yeah, just 'cause you like money. But yeah, that and then recurring revenue model, you know, we had ultimately ended up selling for 8 times revenues when I was doing strategy consulting, which sounded much cooler. I would charge Williams-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.

Like, I'm making a great investment. I'm basically compounding like 44% a year. Yeah, great. And I get the tax benefits of real estate and it's passive and I don't like it. It's like retail, which everyone thinks is dead. There's, I think, less than 4% vacancy rates, like, nationally.

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, I mean, there's some nuance there because I think the tier 2 malls are 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.

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?

Really thoughtful question. When I was a young man and I was trying to find romantic or sexual partners, I was constantly trying to figure out what person do I need to be that will get them to like me? I was trying to constantly figure it out. Do I need to act indifferent like I don't care? I was just— it wasn't me establishing a relationship with this person or on a date with this person. It was my representative. Who tried to figure out what I thought this person would want from me, or specifically how I could convince this person to have sex with me. And what you realize is the person you want to end up with is the person where you get to be you and they like you despite the real you. Like, in the best relationships I've ever had are people that I, like, I can be me around and they just really like me for me. I look back on sources of confidence My first serious relationship was a woman named Melanie Kagan, and I was crazy about her, and she was crazy about me. And I think that confidence of someone who actually knows you and you can be honest with and call and who sees your insecurities and, you know, and still really is into you. I just think I— if I could wish anything on a young person, it would be the opportunity to be who you are around somebody and find out that people— there are people out there who will love you for that. I just think that I didn't figure that out. I was constantly trying to put on a mask of who I thought would be the most attracted or interested in me, and bragging and boasting. And also, I think the ultimate weapon, the ultimate aphrodisiac for young men to give to women, is this strange thing called follow-up questions. For me, it was always controlled boasting. And to actually just take an interest in someone's life and notice them, I found was really powerful later in my life. I would also recommend probably being very careful about getting married young. I think you're a different person at 32 than you are at 22. I would always suggest living together first to see what it's like to have that kind of roommate. I think you need to get alignment around money. I've been a best man at 4 weddings and I give the same toast every time, and it's a sincere toast. There are 3 things to a success— being a successful husband. The first is put the scorecard away. Decide what kind of husband, son, friend, partner, investor you wanna be. Hold yourself to that standard. Don't keep score. I've kept score my whole life with relationships. It's been a disaster for me cuz you will naturally inflate your own contribution and minimize theirs, and you always feel unhappy. Decide the kind of person you wanna be. Hold yourself to that standard. 2, always express physical and sexual desire. Sex says— and affection, whether it's holding a hand or fooling around with your partner in the bathroom at a party— it says, I choose you, I want you. I think women want to be wanted, and I, I just think that animal instinct, expressing desire, is super important in a partnership. And I think it's a wonderful thing. I think we're physical beings. And the third thing is Never ever let a woman be cold or hungry. Pashminas and Power Bars wherever you are.

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 because I was falling into this trap of Dunning-Kruger. I thought, okay, because I have some insight around a couple of things that everyone demands to deserve and wants my opinion on everything. And 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? 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, 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 think you're very persuasive.

I say really stupid things all the time. And, you know, in my comments section will remind me of that all the time. 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 it, 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 gonna 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 try and understand it. I have a group of analysts who find data. So I'm practicing golf 4 hours a day. There's no— 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. 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 two 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.

7 recordings a week across different podcasts. I do 2 to 3 media hits, either radio or television a week. And I try not to work more than 30 or 40 hours. And storytelling is my core competence, but my superpower is I've always been able to attract and retain really good people. People think, people come up to me and say, I'm so impressed with your content. I love your graphs and your doodles. They think it's me. They think it's me in my kitchen with a camcorder and doodling on a napkin. I have 28 people at PropGene Media.

Yeah.

I have some talent, but the key between a practice and an enterprise that creates real money is to find outstanding people and get, and get them to leverage your time and your talent.

But are you sitting down and actually writing this, these 1,000 or 2,000 words, and then they're gonna 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 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 going to be chapter 7 of a book 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 gonna 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, it's 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, um, any administrative or any managing?

Less and less. I used to do that a lot. Um, 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 DeJokis, 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 I was just okay. I was good in the sense that I think I created economic security for a lot of people. I was raised in a generation in San Francisco where Steve Jobs is our mentor, and there was this terrible gestalt that infected a bunch of young tech executives, including myself, that if you were talented and nice, you were talented. If you were talented and an asshole, you were Steve Jobs and you were a genius. And so I wasn't nearly as kind. I was never mean to people, but I wasn't nearly as kind as I should have been. And what happens when you get older is you realize you have this capital. Sometimes it's just financial capital. You can pay people well, but if you're a senior-level exec and someone they respect, grabbing someone and sending them and pulling them into a room or sending them an email saying, you are outstanding here, I'm so impressed with you, it changes their life for a day. And I never did that shit. And now I do it all the time. I'm trying to catch up, but I, Also on the negative side, occasionally say something, would say something stupid in a meeting. And rather than taking them aside and saying, that makes no sense, I would say in the meeting, that makes no fucking sense. And the person would be humiliated. That was not, I'm not proud of that. That was not a kind thing to do. But I thought that's leadership. I could have been so much kinder. So I am now, I try to be really thoughtful and proactive and, I hear about someone getting divorced and I just call them and say, I'm giving you money. I had a friend of mine who's fairly famous get arrested a few days ago in fucking Minneapolis. And I'm like, just send me your bank details. Everyone needs money when they get arrested. Like, don't talk about it. Don't— there's something I've learned. Don't ask people if they need help. Help them. Don't ask. No one wants to say, yeah, I need help. You're more powerful than me and I fucked up and you're on top. I need your help. Don't ask people if they need help. Help them.

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 can 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.

When you go into your 50s, this weird thing happens and it's really awful. Your friends start dying. There's these genetic time bombs that go off. In the last few years, I've had a friend die from a nerve disorder, leukemia, and pancreatic cancer who just should not have died. There's a picture of 8 of us. From the fraternity at UCLA, you know, closest, our posse, our closest friends, 3 of us are dead. And if you had ranked all of us, including some of us who've become obese, some of us who were too stressed out, these would've been the guys who would be least likely to die. And so all of a sudden you just start thinking about, okay, what's important to me? And if you're blessed with economic security, you immediately move to like, all right, money's a means. But it's not the ends. And it is very hard to start behaving that way. I just flew to fucking Jackson Hole 'cause I got offered $200,000 to speak. And I said yes. I can't help, if someone offers me 4 times or 5 times my mother's annual salary when she was a secretary, I can't help it, I go. And it took me away from my boys for 3 days. By the way, it's not easy to get from London to Jackson Hole, just so you know. And for a 1-hour speech to these masters of the universe. And I'm like, why am I? I got there and I'm like, why am I here? I miss my kid. My kid had one line singing in his thing. And I'm like, I should be at that. Why the fuck am I not there? And so you realize as you get older, like if you're blessed with some level of economic security, do shit with your friends, do shit on your own. Role models is this guy named Barry Rosenstein, famous hedge fund manager. And he, I asked, I came from, I was asking him about wealth. Like once you get to a point of economic security, he said the hard part is, and, and the lesson here is the following. When you get to economic security, there's 3 buckets in your life. There's things you have to do. He said, Scott, if my biggest investor's in town, I have to have dinner with him. There, there's things you want to do. I want to go on college tour with my, my oldest. I want to do that. And then there's things you should do. The real power of economic security is to like eliminate the should bucket. There's things you wanna do, there's things you have to do, get rid of the should. And what I realized is like half the things I was doing in my life were the should bucket. Well, I've been invited to Davos. Well, I absolutely should go. I'm at fucking Davos. I'm like, why am I here? Why am I here?

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

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 should— 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 the, 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 because they'd have more free time. Give me the milestones or the benchmarks, and ideally with numbers that you could think of.

Sure. The number's easy. Take your, take your burn, take what you think you need every year to be happy. For some people, that's $60,000 a year. My dad with Social Security needed like another $10,000 or $20,000 a year to live the way he wanted to live. Some people need a million bucks a year and then times it by 25. Assume a post-tax return of 4%. And once you have 25 times the burn you think you'll need, you can start eliminating the shit bucket.

And does that change over time? 'Cause you know, your, uh, 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 at $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 twenties, if I could ever save $1 million, I'm done. I'm gonna 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.

No, you're exactly right. No one feels sorry for you. But if you live— I lived in Manhattan. And in 2010, I was just starting to get speaking gigs. I was just starting to get sort of real money from being a professor. My partner was working at Goldman. I think we were making $700,000 or $800,000 a year. That felt like a lot of money to me. We couldn't afford to live in Manhattan. We had just had 2 kids. Granted, we didn't need to send our kids to private school, but we were going to. We were renting. Our rent was $14,000 a month. We needed a 3-bedroom 'cause we had to live in because she worked and so did I. We had no money. You know, it's not your birthright to live in Manhattan. So what we did was, and the thing that sent us over the edge was my kid applied to 7 schools at the age of 4 and got rejected from all 7 'cause he was speech delayed. By the way, story ends well. He just got into UVA early decision. So things worked out for him. But when he couldn't speak at the age of 4, all 7 schools we applied to said no. So when schools that you're gonna pay $58,000 to, for the kid to play with blocks, decide they don't want your son, I'm like, that's it, we're outta here. I moved to Florida back when it was inexpensive in 2010. And I'm not exaggerating, I saved, I cut my burn by probably 50%. I rented a place on the intercoastal for $5,000 a month instead of paying $14,000. The school was $14,000 instead of $58,000. And we were very disciplined. We took all of our savings, including the 13% of top line in tax savings and we invested in the market and kind of the rest is history. It's fine to be ambitious. I find young people don't want an honest conversation around what's required to live the lifestyle they want to live where they want to live it. And people are really, there's a lot of really happy people living in a suburb of St. Louis who join a country club, coach Little League, and make 100 grand a year. You know, their husband is a nurse, maybe they work part-time, he works part-time at a nonprofit. There's a lot of different ways to be happy, but be clear, if you wanna live in Manhattan or LA or San Francisco or even now Miami and have a fabulous lifestyle, you're gonna have to make a shit ton of money, which means you're gonna have to work all the fucking time unless you're smart enough to have rich parents. And what I find with young people is they don't wanna have an honest conversation around their burn and the sacrifice required to get there.

Do you want to do the last question, Sean? Uh, yeah.

Okay. We can finish with this. So you've, uh, you've got sons and that's why I almost want to think about like 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, for most people, it's a pretty tough question.

Um, 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 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 every 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 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've done this from a young age. I did not have money until I was in my 40s. 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.

So Dharmesh Shah, do you know Dharmesh, Scott?

Yeah.

He's the founder of HubSpot. I assume he's a billionaire. I think he is a billionaire. And he— one time I went out to dinner with him and I brought a friend of mine and we ate a lot. It was a really fancy restaurant and he ran to the bathroom and I wanted to be cool and I paid the bill. And he came back and he goes, hey, let's pay. And I was like, no, it's taken care of already. And he was like, what? What? And he ran to the kitchen. He made them refund the check to me and he paid. And I was like, Dharmesh, what are you doing, man? Like, let me, let me, let me be cool here. And he was like, listen, years ago when I was like 22 or 24, I came to America and I started a business and I wanted to get customers. And everyone told me you had to play golf and I didn't know how to play golf and I feel awkward playing golf. But then another person told me, well, just take them out to dinner and just pay for the bill. And that's a really good way for you to, like, treat people nicely and particularly customers. And he goes, from that day forward, I think he was 25, I vowed to pay for dinner 100% of the time that I went out and no one would ever pay for my dinner. And so if you go and pay for this dinner, you will be ruining 25 years of me paying for everyone's dinner. And it was hilarious to hear him just like go through this spiel. And so he has paid for everyone's dinner that he's ever been out to eat with for 25 years now.

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, 'cause 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, 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 big, big, big time.

Yeah, that's like I'm on top.

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 want to comfort you. Your friends don't want to 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 if 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.

I'm horrified by what's going on in Minneapolis and across our nation. I, I think there's a difference between being right and being effective. I wanna move to being effective. What I've noticed is the Trump administration only walks back things when the markets move. And the fastest way to make the markets move right now is to go after the companies that are 40% of the S&P by unsubscribing from Amazon, from Apple, from Microsoft platforms, from, I have a whole list of what I call ground zero and then going after and holding the power of the purse from companies providing infrastructure, whether it's AT&T or Hilton. But I have a site called Resist and Unsubscribe and I'm trying to convince people that the weapon hiding in plain sight is their spending. 70% of our economy is consumer spending. And if you just— in 2020, the greatest political action in history was the first quarter of 2020. And it wasn't because hundreds of thousands of people were dying. It was 'cause the GDP crashed 31%. If we can put a dent in the Magnificent Ten's economic power, the president will hear about that and he will respond. And the fast way to do that, if you unsubscribe from ChatGPT, they're trading at 40 times revenues, $240. That's $10,000 in market cap you take away from OpenAI. If you try to do that with Kroger's, you would need 5 families to stop buying all groceries for a year. So go after the soft tissue, and that is tech companies subscription. And you're gonna find, as I did, you have 3 subscriptions to Anthropic. You don't need 3. I have 7 streaming media platforms. I don't need 7. I was on Amazon One, the healthcare company paying $199 a year. I don't need that. Unsubscribe February is a great time to take stock of all the money we're spending at the hands of millions of people and billions of capital. They convince you to spend more money than you need, and it sends a message to the markets and the administration. Resist and unsubscribe.

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 Blythe 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 want to speak up because they think they're going to 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 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, 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. That's kind of— I think that it feels nice to have an enemy and to get behind a movement.

You're worried you're throwing a party and no one's going to show up, right? So there's some public failure risk here, but it feels good to do things with other people. And also, I just, I just canceled my Uber account. And when you cancel it, it gives you a graphic. It shows you how many times you've ordered from Uber Eats. I've ordered 34 times from Uber Eats. And then it shows you how many Uber rides you've taken. In the last 10 years, I've taken 3,747 Uber rides. So I take 350 rides a year. I do Uber Luxe. I don't own a car. And as big tech platforms do, they used to price it very aggressively. They consolidate the market. And then Uber has raised the prices on UberX— I'm sorry, Uber Luxe— 7 to 10% a year, way above inflation. So the average price of Uber Lux when I was first taking it was $40 to $60. Now it's $80 to $120. So, and again, story of privilege, I'm spending $35,000 a year on Uber. So I've started taking the tube here in London. I've started taking the subway in New York, which is awesome. And I've started taking UberX. And I figured with the money I'm saving, I could lease an i7, a Range Rover, or a G-Wagon, including insurance and parking. And this is a story of privilege. I realize most people can't spend that kind of money on Uber. But what I'm telling you is if you really look at recurring revenue subscription payments to big tech, you're going to find out you can save a lot of money without a great deal of effort. And so I'm, I'm excited about this. This is the soft tissue. This is the testicles of the economy. These companies are way over their skis. Their valuations are inflated. If you want to send a message to the president, don't like and subscribe this. Video, resist and unsubscribe.

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.