Motley Fool Money - The Algebra of Happiness

Episode Date: May 17, 2019

Walmart delivers. Pinterest plummets. Baidu reports a rare loss. And Taco Bell gets into the hotel business. Analysts Andy Cross, Ron Gross, and Jason Moser tackle these stories and weigh in on earnings from Alibaba, NVIDIA, and Wix. Plus, NYU professor and best-selling author Scott Galloway talks about his new book, The Algebra of Happiness: Notes on the Pursuit of Success, Love, and Meaning.  Get $50 off your first job post at www.LinkedIn.com/Fool. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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That's why they call it money. From Fool Global Headquarters, this is Motley Fool Money. It's the Motley Full Money Radio Show. I'm Chris Hell joining me in studio this week's senior analyst. Jason Moser, Andy Cross, and Ron Gross. Good to see you, as always, gentlemen. Hey, Chris. Hey. We've got the latest headlines from Wall Street for the second week in a row. Our guest is Scott Galloway. And as always, we'll give you an inside look at the stocks on our radar.

But we begin with a retail giant getting a little bit giant-er. Walmart shares up this week after a rock-solid first quarter report. Ron, same store sales were looking good. E-commerce sales looking really good. Is giant or a word? It is now. Another strong quarter, Chris. Earnings beat expectations. sales were light due to weakness overseas, but the U.S. was up 3.3%. Now, international down 4.9%, but if you exclude currency, up 1.2%, not too shabby.

Com sales up 3.4%. But e-commerce is the big number here, up 37%. And there are costs associated with that, but still a very strong quarter. Well, and you look at the investments they have been making in e-commerce, Andy, and they've been piling up these types of quarters for a while now. I can't think of a single quarter where they just knocked it out of the park with e-commerce being up like 80% or something of that, but you start stacking up these 20, 30% gains and it pays off. Guys, I think Walmart is the Microsoft equivalent from 2015.

And Doug McMillan may be like the Sotian-Dadella of 2019. I mean, you look at the investments they're making e-commerce-wise. Flipkart. They have a new Walmart.com experience. They now have pickup at 2,400 stores. They have a Walmart voice order through Google Assistant you can now use. They're working on Next Day delivery. They are making these investments in e-commerce. He is trying, Doug McMill and the CEO, trying to grow Walmart into a company.

They can compete against not just Amazon, but compete in a digital space more than ever so before. Yeah, we were saying this week on Market Foolery. I mean, Walmart has to make these investments, right? I mean, this is something they have to do. But I thought the timing was impeccable for Jeff Bezos on May 4th. 14th to tweet out, hey, we're investing $1.5 billion in our new Air Hub to get you your packages faster, 3 million square feet, and it's going to create 2,000 jobs. And if you're guessing that driving a front loader was fun, you're right. So, I mean, it was just very well-timed,

and I think it all goes back to this point that, I mean, yes, it's great to see Walmart doing this. They really kind of have to. But I think this also really works out well for consumers, because as they get bigger, specifically Amazon, you know, you're seeing some complaints about turnaround time and shipping schedules and people not getting their packages in the day or two days that they were promised. Now, with Walmart upping their game, there's going to be a little bit more choice there. Yeah, it really seems like Walmart is closing the gap with Amazon, and in doing so, Ron, is maybe separating themselves from Target.

Well, for sure. You can buy Target now for 12 times earnings, by the way. And you'll have to pay up like 21 times for Walmart, so you can see it just in the valuation. But they started to roll out next day delivery across the country for more than 200,000, and items. That's a big differentiator, as you mentioned, compared to Target. But comp sales, I just want to bring it back to the traditional metric, up 3.4%. Best in nine years for Walmart. These numbers are really strong. And if we ignore international just a little bit, because of the currency fluctuations, it's a really strong report. Baidu reported a loss for the first quarter, which is notable because this is the first

quarterly loss the Chinese search giant has posted since it went public in 2005. shares of Bidu falling on Friday, Andy, and hitting a six-year low. Yeah, it turns out 80% market sharing your core market doesn't really help you now so much. When you look at the revenues up 15% or 21% if you break out some of the, if you don't include some of the businesses they've sold, but their core revenues were lower than the midpoint guidance they gave by more than a billion Chinese yuan. So strengths in education, retail, and their commerce sectors, which were balanced offset by the health care weakness, online gaming, financial services.

There are other revenues continue to be very strong, driven by ICHE, which did not have that great of a quarter and has kind of struggled as well, too. But like you said, Chris, first operating loss ever, the guidance was weak for the year for the quarter on the revenue side, but really the investments they are making, traffic acquisition costs up 41% in cost, up 41% content cost, up 47 percent, bandwidth costs, SGA costs, R&D costs, just these big investments that Bidu feels like it has to make to remain competitive is clearly hurting the operating profits of that business. Bidu's often referred to as the Google of China.

It is a fraction of alphabet size market cap around $45 billion. But everything you just said combined with just everything I've read about this quarter, it makes me wonder if they're going to be stuck at this market cap for a while now. because, as you pointed out, when you dominate your home market, I mean, there's only so much better that can get. Yeah, I think you're right, Chris. And it's now not a very expensive stock when you look at it from an earnings, multiple perspective, or revenue. It's less than three times sales, and it sells for less than 20 times earnings. And clearly, investors aren't really expecting it to grow much higher than, certainly not what it used to do, and probably not more than 10% a year. So I think as they make these investments in AI and technology to be

competitive in the Chinese space, it's going to hurt the bottom line, and the growth expectations are going to be slower than what they used to be. Invidia's first quarter profits came in higher than expected. The chipmaker also raised guidance, and Wall Street basically shrug, Jason. Well, I mean, it's been a tough past 12 months for the company. It's been a good start to the year. I think this is a good business. They're dealing with a stretch of challenges, albeit they were some self-inflicted.

Looking further out, though, I think there's plenty of reason to be optimistic about the potential there. I mean, you go back to the inventory problems that really, you know, we started to see signs that there might be something in Q2 of last year. Q3 is where they really materialized, and that's when the stock kind of fell off of a cliff. But those were some inventory issues they're working through them. The T4GPU is gaining some traction from some big names out there. They announced a big acquisition during the quarter with a company called Melanox. It's going to be a $6.9 billion all-cash. acquisition. Melanox is a network tech company. I think there were some challenges in crypto.

You only heard crypto mentioned once on the call this quarter, so I think they're getting past that. But the outlook for the year is still a bit tame as data center spending is on pause, and gaming is facing a little headwinds. I think there's some big implications for this company down the road, though, an augmented reality with headsets and their drive platform. So big business generates a ton of cash. They're going to keep on reinvest. a lot of that cashback in R&D, which means they'll be a major player in this space for many, many years to come. I actually am pretty optimistic about where they're headed. Alibaba's fourth quarter revenue rose 51%.

Profits came in higher than expected and shares of the e-commerce giant stayed flat for the week, Ron. Yeah, concerns about slowing growth. But as you point out, the numbers are pretty impressive. 51% growth in revenue. That's a big number. Investments in cloud computing really paying off. That unit was up 76 percent, still only accounts for 8 percent of revenue now. But they are now the third largest cloud service provider after Microsoft and Amazon. They've got 40 percent share in China. So clearly those investments are paying off. Their core commerce business up 54 percent. Advertising and fee revenue up 31 percent. Adjusted earnings up 50 percent. These are really

big numbers. Stock's only trading 26 times for numbers like that. It's not that expensive. And as you said, the stock is off about 12% in May, but still up 24% for the year. Is it safe to assume, particularly when we're talking about tech giants like Alibaba and Baidu, that the ongoing trade talks and tensions between the U.S. and China, they just don't go in the plus column for businesses like these. Yeah, yeah. It's interesting. We talked about Walmart earlier. They're more concerned with what's going on than Alibaba is. Alibaba in the call and in the press release kind of pooh-poot it and said they're not too concerned about it.

at it, they think it's going to work out. Up next, we've got three stocks on our radar and one hotel that you may or may not be excited about. Stay right here. You're listening to Motley Fool Money. Welcome back to Motley Fool Money, Chris Hill here in studio, but Jason Moser, Andy Cross and Ron Gross. I'd like to welcome a new radio station that is joining the Motley Fool affiliates list. KTRC in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Santa Fe, New Mexico. A lovely town.

Yes, it is. Wix reported strong financial results. for the first quarter. That was the opening line of the press release that Wix issued to announce their own first quarter results. I don't blame them, Andy, for trying to highlight their own results, but I'm more curious about what an analyst like you thinks of Wix's results. Well, it was good. I don't like to see so much promotions from the company coming out like that, but revenues were up 27 percent collections, which is the cash they bring in. If you count, the future cash they're going to bring in from the subscriptions, up 26 percent. They added 180,000 net

new premium subscribers. They have premium subscribers and they have registered users. You can join Wix and not pay a fee. Just use the advertising on the site. Total register is up 19% to 148 million. They added a record that quarter. The guidance was pretty strong. Revenue up 25 to 26% for the quarter of next year. I think free cash flow was a little bit on the lighter side for the year compared to what they said last quarter. And that's because a lot of the investments they're making. But this company continues to deliver. They have a nice model that they bring members in a freemium model, then they sign up for a subscription. They offer a lot of tools for people to be able to build websites, whether it's for commerce or just showcasing your art or

whatever you may want to do. And it's not that expensive of a stock. It's only $7 billion in market cap. They have a $700 million cash, $400 million of debt on the balance sheet. They generate free cash flow. So pretty good results from Wix and from the story for the future over the next three to five years. I like the stock. That Pinterest lost money in its first quarterly report as a public company is not really a surprise, but the fact that Pinterest lost nearly three times as much money as expected, maybe why shares fell more than 10 percent on Friday, Jason. Perhaps. Perhaps. I mean, I think given what we know today, and that this is still a newly public company, with a somewhat limited user base, you might see the narrative out there saying

this is a bit of an overreaction from the market. I actually don't think it is. I think the reaction is pretty fair. And I do think that we will probably see things get worse before they get better. Now, with that said, I mean, the numbers were not bad. They were pretty good. Revenue was up 54% from a year ago. Monthly active users up 22%. Global active revenue per user was up 26%. The problem there is that the growth is starting to slow down. And, you know, these guys were a little late to the game and going public. So that's understandable. But if you're a social network and your name isn't Facebook, you're dealing with someone. what, of a limited user base. So then really it becomes more story about what you do with the

user base, right? And we're seeing cases where companies are doing a lot of productive things with their user base. And I think that with Pinterest, they do have a lot of potential in the retail implications because it is a platform that favors a bit more of a commerce-style environment. An example there, companies can now upload their full catalogs to Pinterest so that people can pin things and actually commit to buying things, which I think offers new avenue of profitability for the company down the road. But if you look at full-year expectations, they're planning to bring in a little bit more than $1 billion in revenue this year, still going to be unprofitable. And that ultimately prices the stock around 14, 15 times sales right now.

We've seen this story play out before already. My suspicion is we see this stock fall probably below 10-time sales. And at that point, you reassess and see if they're making progress on the commerce side. And if they are, then it could represent, I think, a pretty good opportunity. This is not the first time we've seen this, and it probably won't be the last, where company comes out. They have an IPO. The stock pops. In the case of Pinterest, it was up close to 30 percent opening day. And then they issued their first quarterly report, and we see a scenario like this. We've got some big-name companies planning to go public later this year, Slack, Airbnb. What do we want to see from them? Because it kind of seems like, among other things,

Andy, Pinterest could have done a better job of communicating what was coming. Well, I think if you're an investor and now you own stock in Pinterest and you've owned it for a while, you have a pretty good, clear, especially if you're a big institutional investor, expectation of what you want that management team to deliver for quarter, two quarters, maybe three quarters out, and you don't want to see any surprises. And I think if growth starts to slow or expectations come out a little weaker, that's a bad sign for those investors who previously have owned it as a private company and want to see nice gains in the public markets.

There's like this tug-of-war with the investment bankers, though, because the investment bankers are going out on a road show and wanting the company to put its best foot forward and, like, you know, Ixnay on the bad news day, you know, kind of a thing. But yet you still need to be transparent. You certainly can't do anything that would be considered fraud, but you still have a stock to sell. Yeah, and I think for investors like us, non-institutional investors or just your retail investors looking to buy shares in these companies, it's really just about a clear path to profitability. All of these companies that are going public, great to see them out there, but they are unprofitable, and you've got to have an idea of when they'll be able to turn that tide.

This summer, Taco Bell is rolling out its latest limited time offer. A hotel. Yes, Taco Bell is taking over a hotel and resort in Palm Springs, California, starting next month. You can start making your reservations, Ron, at The Bell. It includes a gift shop and a salon with Taco Bell inspired nail art and hairstyling services that you can avail yourself of. I love this move for young brands. Now listen, I'm as whimsical as the next guy, which actually I'm not, but I don't get it. I get the nail art kind of, but what kind of a hair do would speak to a Taco Bell customer? I'm just saying in terms of limited time offers, they've got a pretty good track record. This could be the nach fries of hotels, Jason. I wonder, I mean, I think maybe the sign

as to whether this thing is gaining traction or not is in like a month or two. If we see that excess inventory making its way to booking.com, then you know that maybe they're not quite meeting the numbers that they hope to. If it wasn't the Bell, who else would you prefer? The McDonald's McRibb?

I feel like we're going yum here. I mean, Pizza Hut is clearly the laggard of the three, right? Taco Bell represents 30% of operating profit. It's growing. KFC's a monster. Pizza Hut's the one dragging down the operations here. Maybe they got to do something to revive. that operation. All right, let's get the stocks on our radar. Our man behind the glass,

Steve Brodo is going to hit you with a question. Ron, Gross, you're up first. What are you looking at this week? I'm going back to Rollins. ROL provides pest and termite control services across the U.S. Really steady performer. 21 consecutive years of increased earnings, 17 consecutive years of dividend increases. 80% of sales are recurring. So somewhat recession-proof as well. It continues to make acquisitions in a fragmented industry. But they missed expectations last couple quarters. So the stock has been weak, so maybe a good opportunity to jump in. Steve, question about Rollins? Do you think when folks get the bill from a pest company, they're excited? Or is this sort of a bummer? Is this just like, oh, it's another thing I got

to pay for? I don't really want to hire these guys. I don't want bugs. I have an annual contract, so I only have to think about that once a year. Jason Mozer, what are you looking at? Yeah, recently I was asked on Twitter, what is my favorite dividend stock other than McCormick? And see, I work my work McCormick. Fair question. I said, you know, I've got to go with Home Depot, ticker HD. Earnings are actually out next Tuesday. You know, I was finishing up a front porch renovation in our house, and Home Depot was the exclusive supply provider for that project.

And I asked myself the rhetorical question, again, why do I not own shares of this business? I mean, they're closing in on a 3% yield there. It's just as reliable as the sun coming up. And they made a good point there in the recent call here. Home equity is more than doubled since 2011. 52% of the homes in the U.S. are greater than 40 years old. And that just means that people got to go to Home Depot a lot. Steve Brodo, question about Home Depot.

Yeah, what's going on with the parking lots at Home Depot? That's what you're the question. Everything in the world is stored in their parking lot. I'm going to tell you what? The Home Depot I go to is right next to a Costco. It's like you're driving to two airports at the same time. Andy Cross, what are you looking at? Into it, the provider of TurboTax and QuickBooks,

Min, other personal finance app, Steve, I'm assuming that you filed your taxes this year because it was a good tax season for TurboTax and Intuit. Their units or their filings was up 7%. The stock is up 2.5 times in value for three years. It's been a really nice performer. Revenue expectation for the coming quarter, up 11 percent, and earnings per share up 12 percent. It's really about the ecosystem they're building and look to continue to grow the ecosystem revenues at more than 30 percent year-over-year. Steve, it seems like there's a lot of momentum with companies like Intuit around tax season. How can they harness that momentum to grow after April 15th? Yeah, well, it's all about QuickBooks on the subscriber counts for the businesses,

because that continues to be a need for lots of small businesses out there, Steve. What do you want to add to your watch list, Steve? I think I will go with Intuit. All right, Andy Cross, Jason Moes and Ron Gross. Guys, thanks for being here. Thanks, good. Scott Galloway followed up his bestseller about tech companies by writing a book about happiness. Details next, so stay right here.

This is Motley Full Money. Hey, before we get to Scott Galloway, let's talk about hiring. When you're looking to hire for your small business, of course you want to find the best person for the job. Odds are, that person is already on LinkedIn. LinkedIn jobs makes it easy to get matched with quality candidates who make the most sense for your role. People come to LinkedIn every day to learn and advance their careers.

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That's LinkedIn.com slash fool. Terms and conditions apply. All right. Let's get to Scott Galloway. Be happy. Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. I'm Chris Hill. Scott Galloway is Professor of Marketing at NYU Stern,

the founder of L2, the co-host of Pivot with Recodes Kara Swisher, and author of the New York Times bestseller, The Four, the hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google. And if you listen last week, you know that Scott was on the show talking about the future of big tech. Well, Scott has a brand new book out entitled The Algebra of Happiness, Notes on the Pursuit of Success, Love, and Meaning. I had a hunch. Scott was going to write another book, but when we got around talking about it, I let him know that I wasn't expecting this to be the topic.

I got to confess, I was surprised that this was your second book. In fact, when you were you're going to say, we talked about... So was my publisher. When we talked about your first book, knowing how the publishing industry works, I was already thinking, in fact, I think I asked you about your second book. How did you go from writing about huge technology companies to writing a book about the math behind happiness? Yeah, so your instincts are entirely correct. I'm in a position where I don't need to write books for money. I do it for personal discovery, and because when I'm gone, I want my kids to read my books and think of it. They understood me better.

And my process for writing books, which I've done twice now, is I take a class that's popular, I turn it into a video, and then if the video is successful, I write a book. So my first book, The Four, I teach a class, excuse me, on the big four platforms, did a video, got a million views, write a book. My last class is called The Algebra of Happiness, and I take the kids through a series of algorithms based on personal experience, observations of my cohort, and then a decent amount of research to say, all right, economic success is great, but what's the difference between economic success and happiness? And I try to distill it

down to a number of equations and then have a discussion around it. And there is no one equation, but there are best practices and there are signals around cohorts that are typically happier than other cohorts. And the class is very popular, did a video, video got two million views. So my publisher was jonesing for your correct instincts to get a second book out, because if your first book does well, the pump is primed. And the distribution channel, Barnes & Olman, Amazon will order a lot of your books, and that's kind of half the battle. So they said, we need to get something out right away.

And I came back and said, okay, I've written another book. And I said, great, what is it? Amazon, Ali Bob, what are you writing about? I'm writing about happiness. And they're literally, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. They're like, do not do that. Write the five, write Amazon, whatever you want, but write about tech. And I said, no, I'm writing a book on happiness.

This has been a journal of personal discovery for me. It's something I'm passionate about. I struggle with anger and depression, and I want to manage those things without chemical intervention. And so I think a lot about this stuff. And it's sort of a, you know, it's really a means for me to manage kind of my own issues or some of them. And also the kids seem to respond well to it in class. And it's just something I'm very interested in. And it just, this was an easy decision for me.

And my publisher came around and said, all right, we'll publish it. And so far it seems to be doing well, and here we are. So one of the things you touch on pretty early is happiness in the short term, there are a lot of ways to get that. You can get that at Chipotle. But this is much more about long-term happiness. Obviously, there are so many variables, as you said, there's no one equation. But what are a couple of the variables that you think people should focus on? So you're right.

The title is a little bit misleading, because happiness is a sensation, and you'll get short-term happiness from everything, as you said, from Chipotle to Netflix to Cialis will give you the short-term sensation of happiness. What I'm really writing about here is how do you develop an arc of satisfaction? What are the series of investments and decisions you make in your career and your relationship in yourself such that you're more likely at the end of your life to feel like you check some boxes in indelible ink and feel more satisfied, such that when the pendulum of your mood and your life swing up and down as they do for everyone. They swing on a higher plane, so you feel like, okay, I've led sort of a rewarding, meaningful, satisfying life. So I've tried to distill down

what I think are some of those things, but you're absolutely right. Happiness, you know, David Brooks wrote a great article last week in that kind of summarized it. Happiness is usually from personal achievement or a sensation, but true joy is in the company of others. It's a collective group that is recognizing someone else's achievement like how you feel when your son's graduation, you know, that's joyous. And so the things I'm trying to talk about here are how do you create these moments of joy and create, if you will, an ecosystem where these moments of joy are more regular and that you can be present in those moments such that you can think, I'm an atheist. A lot of, I think my motivation comes from the fact that I think life is finite, that at some point

I will look into my children's eyes and know that our relationship is coming to an end, which is obviously tragic, but I also think it's motivating. And I want to ensure that I make the requisite investments in this finite time I have, which is going faster and faster as I get older, such that when I'm toward the end, I can look back and sort of hopefully be able to drop the mic. What do you think is the relationship between money and happiness? Well, there's good research out there. There is a relationship. You are happier being, having more money than less, but it tops out. So someone in the middle class is happier, generally, than someone who's struggling or is in the lower income cohorts, and someone who's affluent is generally

happier than someone is in the middle class. But once you get to a point where you can afford nice housing, education for your children, absorb an economic shop, take nice vacations, you know, have enough money to retire, which, by the way, is no small feat. But once you get to that point, happiness tops out. So people making full... $40,000 a year with three kids are less happy than someone making half a million dollars a year. But the guy or gal making half a million dollars a year is no less happy than the person making $5 million a year. And the other myth is that billionaires are less happy.

They're not. They're no more happy or less happy than millionaires. So the question is, what I tell my kids, you've got to bust a move to economic security. I think we live in a capitalist society. As much as we'd like to think otherwise, money buys a certain amount of happiness, satisfaction, health care, better opportunities for your kids, a better selection pool of mates, security, a lack of fear from some things that can happen to you

when you don't have money. It makes you very vulnerable in our society. But at a certain point, you've got to realize that money is ink in the pen, and it helps write this story. It can make certain chapters brighter, and it can maybe write chapters you wouldn't otherwise be able to write, but it's not your story. And in your 20s and 30s, yeah, create chart a path towards economic security.

And economic security means different things for different people. If you want to live in rural Pennsylvania and have a nice life and have kids, and there's nothing wrong with it, that's your chart to happiness, then your economic security has a different target on it. It has a different number. If you want to live a master the universe lifestyle in London or San Francisco or New York, have three kids, send them to private school, I think it's likely you'll end up with an ex-wife and alimony and child support

and want that house in the Hamptons, then boss your economic weight class is going to go way up and it's going to be harder to get there. But once you're there or once you have a path that's kind of charted, you've got to start thinking about, all right, beyond that, what makes me happy? And a lot of my friends never get off the wheel. They always have a number in their mind and their number is their net worth. And the terrible thing about numbers is you can always double them in your imagination. It's like that Star Wars episode where Luke is trying to talk Hans Sello into rescuing Princess Leibor.

and he says, if you do this, they'll give you more money than you can ever imagine. And Hans Sello responds, I don't know, I can imagine a lot of money. So if you were to ask people at the beginning of their career, what do you want from your life? They might say, I want meaningful relationships, I want to fall in love, I want to have kids who are emotionally well-balanced. I want friends. I want great experiences. And a lot of my friends at this point have achieved all of those things. But what they also know is their net worth.

and they don't seem to be happy until they get 2x that. And then once they have that, they're like, okay, I want 4x. And so I think it's important to keep your mind on what are the big boxes you want to check qualitatively and recognize that at some point, I'm not saying stop making money, but money isn't your story. It's the ink. One of the things you write about is that the number one piece of advice seniors would have given their younger selves is that they wish they had been less hard on themselves. I'm not calling you a senior, but is that the advice you would give to your younger self?

Yeah, although I think I would have been, I mean, I was a total f*** up as a young man. I drank too much. I wasn't disciplined. I was very selfish. I didn't invest in relationships, so I probably would have been a bit harder on myself. But the research is there, and that is the number one piece of advice. Seniors would give to their younger selves is don't be so hard on yourself because the key or one of the keys are pillars to any successful relationship long. long term is forgiveness. You will screw up, your partner will screw up. And if you don't bring a sense

of forgiveness as of an investment you're willing to make in the relationship, it's not, you know, you're going to have trouble with long term relationships. And the same is true with the relationship with yourself. It's important that you hold yourself accountable. You know, it's important that you mourn. It's important that you beat yourself up. But you have to set a fuse on it in a timeline. And then you need to move on with the important business of life. So the notion that you can forgive yourself and move on and not anchor always off the most successful person you know, which is our competitive gene. We tend to anchor off of that, you know, the guy or gal that is super successful, following their passion, great relationship, good looking, works out, donates time at the ASPCA and has a food block.

Assume you are not that person and recognize life is a series of tradeoffs. And if you get to a point where you have meaningful relationships, some economic security, a lot of people in your life that love you, then you have checked the most important boxes in the world. And to consistently look at that number around money and to consistently measure yourself against the most successful people you know on Instagram is kind of a recipe for a little bit of self-loathing. I'm sure your publishers were surprised in a couple of ways. One that you followed up the book about technology with a book about happiness. But whereas your first book was very analytical, this book is very personal. You share a lot about your own experiences, including one of, if not the

toughest things we all have to deal with at some point, and that is death. You write very eloquently about the experience with your mother and, as you say, giving her a good death. I'm wondering if you could just share a little bit about that experience. So first off, thanks for saying that. And yeah, So the light of my life and any success that I've registered as a function of two things. Being born in America where, at least they used to kind of love the unremarkable. And I'm not being modest. I was a remarkably unremarkable kid and student. I got incredible opportunities through the generosity and vision of the California taxpayers

and the Regents of the University of California that gave me undergrad and graduate education from UCLA and at no cost. I mean, that is literally why I'm here speaking to you. And the second thing was the irrational passion for my well-being of a woman who came here on a steamship and lived and died a secretary. And so I think a lot about my mom. She was literally the light of my life. It was me and her against the world. And losing her for me was just devastating and quite frankly kind of took me off track for a couple years. And as a heterosexual male that thinks of myself as a bit of a badass in an alpha male, or at least that's what I aspire to, it's not easy to talk about how much I miss my mom.

And what I decided was my mom had made a huge investment in me growing up, and that I was going to make a fraction of that investment, one, because I had the resources, and I want to acknowledge, a lot of people aren't in a position to do this. But when my mom was diagnosed with terminal cancer, I decided I was going to take some time and move in with her and manage her health care because I had said to her, what's on your bucket list, thinking it was to go to London or to go to Wimbledon,

we knew she was dying. And she said, the only thing on my bucket list is I want to do. die at home. And that's not easy with terminal cancer. So I committed to helping her do that. I moved in with her at the seniors community in Summerlin, Nevada. And I spent the last six months of her life with her, kind of hanging out, watching Frazier, looking through old photos, taking walks, and just spending a lot of time together. And the rewards we get from raising children are pretty well documented, but I think the kind of the undiscovered reward that people don't talk about as much is that if you can give someone you care about a dignified exit, it's hugely rewarding.

I'm very proud of my kids. I'm proud of my professional success, but I also think that what I was able to contribute to giving my mom a good exit is something I'm just, you know, it just feels right. It feels it was a signal of my success, my strong relationship with her, and I hope that my kids feel strongly enough about me and are successful enough such that they, they're in a position to make my exit more dignified. But it's, if you're in a position, if you have the resources and you have the kind of relationship with a parent or someone who's on their way out, to invest in that relationship is enormously rewarding.

And I know I'm doing a ton of virtue signaling right here. This is not an investment, quite frankly, I would make in my father. He wasn't as good to me as my mom. so it requires a certain amount of what I'll call, I don't know, at least for me, I'm not evolved enough to do it for anybody, but for my mom, it was something that I just, that I treasure, and it was just a, you know, kind of a nice time in our lives. It was a strange time during the day I was managing her health care, and at night I was going down to the strip and get a pretty drunk with guys and strippers, and then during the day, managing my mom's health care. You know,

it doesn't make for a Hallmark Channel movie my life. But it was a strange and rewarding part of my life. So anyways, I think there's huge ROI in helping someone depart gracefully. Coming up, Scott Galloway's advice for the graduating class of 2019. Stay right here. You're listening to Motley Fool Money. Welcome back to Motley Fool Money, Chris Hill talking with Scott Galloway about his brand new book, The Algebra of Happiness. All right, it's graduation season.

What is the 60-second graduation special? that Scott Galloway is giving this year. Oh, gosh. Well, they haven't asked. Although I was the commencement speaker, the student commencement speaker at Berkeley. You know, look, if there's one key best practice, it's pretty straightforward. The largest study on happiness of its kind, the Harvard grant study tracked 400 males over 80 years. And they found the best practice across the cohort that was the happiest was pretty

straightforward. And that is the number in depth of meaningful relationships at work. Do you feel respected and admired and do you respect and admire other people with your friends? Do you get a sense of joy and camaraderie and you to provide the same thing to them? And at home with your family, do you feel intense levels of love and support? And just as importantly, do you know they feel that same level of intense support and love? And that is the key. And the first line of this academic study that distills the greatest data set on happiness ever registered is very straightforward.

and that is happiness is love full stop. Your goal as a young person is to put yourself in a position economically, spiritually, and psychologically, such that you can go all in on a group of people and not love them because you're getting something back. You're either getting intimacy or sex or economic partnership, but you decide to love people completely and not keep score because that is the key to the universe. The universe wants to prosper. When a sun dies, it comes back stronger. The species must propagate so the universe creates incentives.

It makes food enjoyable. It makes sex wonderful. And it makes complete love and caring for others the most rewarding thing in the world. So put yourself in a position to experience the most rewarding thing in the world, and that is to love other people completely. You're not going to tell these young graduates

to go out there and follow their passion? Oh, my God, that is such bullshit. Anyone who tells you, whether it's Jeff Bezos or Steve Jobs or any number of the billionaires that come speak to as certain to follow your passion is already rich, and the person on stage is telling you to follow your passion, usually got there in the business of iron ore smelting or software as a service for health care maintenance workers.

Young people's job is to find something they're good at, invest the time, the energy, the grit, and the perseverance to become great at it, and then the accoutrements of being great at something, economic security, prestige, relevance, you know, a certain amount of pride, that will make you passionate about whatever it is. tax accounting. Your key is to find something you like. Follow your passions on weekends. The book is The Algebra of Happiness notes on the pursuit of success, love, and meaning it is available everywhere. And you should absolutely pick it up. Scott Calloway, thank you so much. Thanks for having me.

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