Open Book with Anthony Scaramucci - September 2025 Q&A - Work-Life Balance, Working in the White House & Biggest Regrets

Episode Date: September 4, 2025

Anthony Scaramucci is the founder and managing partner of SkyBridge, a global alternative investment firm, and founder and chairman of SALT, a global thought leadership forum and venture studio. He is the host of the podcast Open Book with Anthony Scaramucci. A graduate of Tufts University and Harvard Law School, he lives in Manhasset, Long Island. Books mentioned in this episode: 1. King of Kings: The Iranian Revolution: A Story of Hubris, Delusion and Catastrophic Miscalculation by Scott Anderson 2. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl 3. The Iliad by Homer 4. The Odyssey by Homer 5. The Nazi Mind by Laurence Rees 6. Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties by Tom O'Neill 7. The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World by Niall Ferguson 📚 Get a copy of my books: 1. Pre-order Solana Rising: Investing in the Fast Lane of Crypto 2. From Wall Street to the White House and Back 3. The Little Book of Bitcoin 4. The Little Book of Hedge Funds 5. Hopping over the Rabbit Hole 6. Goodbye Gordon Gekko: How to Find Your Fortune Without Losing Your Soul Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hello, I'm Anthony Scaramucci, and this is Open Book, where I talk to some of the brightest minds about everything surrounding the written word. That's everything. That's from authors and historians to figures in entertainment, political activists, and of course, Wall Street. Before we dive in, make sure to follow or subscribe wherever you get your podcast. And don't forget to leave a review. Good or bad. I want to hear from you. I want to hear whether you're enjoying it or where we can improve. And I can take the hits. So let me know. If you don't like something, say it straight. Let's get into it. Hey, everybody.

Welcome back to Open Book. I am your host, Anthony Scaramucci. I just want to say thank you to everybody for your comments on places like YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, X, et cetera. Loving the feedback, loving the questions. And I love all the comments. Are good, bad, and the ugly? So if you don't like us, say that. But if you do like us, maybe say that three times.

But in any event, I'm going to go through these questions today. These are the questions for August. And so if I don't answer your question, keep an eye out on my posts in the future. I'm trying to try to get to everybody. And as always, thank you for tuning in and engaging with the show. It means a lot to all of us here at Team Open Book. And so let's get started. This is from YouTube at Galway Bound.

You have a lot of stamina. What's your typical daily routine? How do you get all of that reading in? And how do you stay fit and healthy? So, you know, you can never be fit enough or healthy enough. Remember what Wallace Simpson once said, you could never be too rich or too thin. But I sort of feel like I'm missing a beat once in a while when I'm traveling. I'm a little bit of a junk food eater, so I've got to watch that.

I get very bad habits that you develop in the 1970s, like eating Reese's peanut butter cups and baby Ruth bars. When I'm stressed, I go to those things. So not perfect. Don't want anybody to think that. But here are a couple of things that I do that may help you get into a routine. Got to work out. Got to work out 30 to 60 minutes a day if you could do that.

It doesn't have to be every day, but if you set your goals on every day, you'll get five or six workouts in. I've yet to meet a super depressed person that is lifting. weights in a gym. You find that person. I'd like to hear from that person, but I typically feel if you're in the gym working, you can stay pretty much upbeat. And so build that habit. And getting the reading in is also a habit. So some of the things that I do is I read for an hour or day in the morning, no matter what. So if I'm up in the morning, pull out a book, I pull out my iPad, I pull out something, get me started reading. And I'm listening to books throughout the day.

So yesterday, as an example, I flew to Miami to meet the legendary Gary Breka. And so on the plane. I had my earbuds in and I listened to three hours of a book called the King of Kings. I was really talking about the fall of the Shah of Iran in the late 1970s. It's a piece of history I didn't fully understand. So you can do this, but you've got to fit it in. You've got to be wanting to do it. And so those are my quick lessons there for Galway Bound. Let's go to LinkedIn. This is Patrick Pan at Patrick Pan. Your recent explorations with Galway have been fascinating. What are your thoughts on the role that policy or even the role that private sector influence can play in shaping the development of young men in a time when many young men in

America seem utterly lost. So Patrick, this is the reason why Scott and I put that Lost Boys, a limited series podcast together. There'll be some other things that we're working on. I'm putting some course material together for people, sort of the things that you don't learn in a business school or things you don't learn in college, to think about the world and to adjust yourself mentally. I think it's our mental mindset ultimately that guides us. If we can force our world view to be better than the world around us gets better. And that's even in bad times. And so I really believe part of this crisis, Patrick, is expectation management. Of course, growing up in the 1970s with no money, I had very low expectations. So things that have happened to me,

I have been grateful for. Now, having said that, you could also be in a position where you're me and saying, well, geez, I'm now worth $100 billion. Let me go cry in my soup, which of course you and I both know would be ridiculous. So a couple of things that need to think about for our younger people, expectation management, accountability. I find people are way happier when they're accountable for their mistakes and they're not trying to disclaim blame. Sort of a sense of ownership of the trials and tribulations of life, I think, fortify people, make them feel more secure and more confident about the future. It's a hard thing to sometimes do, but we've got to get our younger people to start thinking like that. And I think if we do that, you'll see a massive sea change. One other point,

As you mentioned public policy, I just want to weed that in there. I do think we're going to need some civic responsibilities for our younger people. I don't know if it's a national service thing. I'm not exactly sure what or how it should be. But I will tell you right now, we've got to get people together. We did that in the Second World War. We did that, believe it or not, and even the Vietnam or the Iraqi War. I'm not saying we need to go to war, but we probably need some level of public service.

Okay, let's keep going. Instagram, Sue Bullis. What's the first book you loved and why? Wow, it's such a great question. First book I really loved was probably Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. How about that? We're all doll writing about Charlie and the very, very famous Willy Wonka and all the eccentricities of Willy Wonka and the excitement of entering that chocolate factory.

And of course, in a weird way, it's a British dream story, if you will. Like the American Dream, the kid starts out poor. And here he is, he's going to end up inheriting the most famous chocolate factory in the world. So it's a very exciting book for me as a young person, really, really enjoyed it. And I would recommend that to younger people. Sort of the book of books for me, in addition to the Bible, of course, would always be the I always steer people towards the Iliad. There's new translations of the Iliad out right now and new translations of the Odyssey,

and they're contemporized. And I think these are brilliant stories about the human condition. And so those are books I always recommend to people. But Charlie and Charles the Factory was number one. Ex Paul. So this is from formerly known as Twitter, and this is Paul. If you could combine two former U.S. presidents to make one, which would you combine and why? Such a great question. And for me, it's always going to be FDR and Abraham Lincoln, both born under the sign of Aquarius, February 12, 1809 for Lincoln, January 30th, 1882. So they're both born in the 19th century, FDR. These men have brilliant insight, brilliant temperaments. But above all, they have a real love of people. And they're making decisions based on, doing the right thing for people that they'll never possibly even meet.

Just think about that. Think about the virtue and the principles of that. And so those two guys, I would love to see combined. What a great question, Paul. Thank you. YouTube, Motown guitar, Joe. I don't know, I'm like picturing you Motown guitar, Joe, and it's a great visual. But why am I so pro-crypto?

I respect you, but I've never heard one good argument from anybody in support of crypto. Maybe you'll be the first, but I'm skeptical. So, Joe, you should be skeptical. And so listen, it took me eight years to make my first cryptocurrency investment. I was introduced to Bitcoin way back in 2012, didn't understand it. It was very skeptical, very cynical of it. It visited upon me three more times. At the third time, I said, you know what, I got to really try to do some homework on this.

So I want you to get skeptical. I think one of the number one things as an investor, number one rule, actually there's two rules. Number one rule, don't lose money. Number two rule, revert always back to the number one rule. So I want you to stay skeptical. I just see this as a major technological breakthrough for all of us to really understand the blockchain or understand the digital property aspects of Bitcoin. If you can get your arms around it, I usually find people nine out of ten people end up going

towards Bitcoin if they do the homework. And so I would just recommend that you do the homework, but please, by all means, continue to stay skeptical. But for me, I own it. I recommend it to people, but I also understand the volatility related to it. Okay, LinkedIn, Matthew Sutton, you've experienced massive wins and very public setbacks. When you're hit with failure in business or life, what's your process for bouncing back quickly and regaining credibility?

So Matthew, let me give me the bad news first. So Matthew, the bad news is no such thing is quickly. When you're getting your ass kicked, it's a violent downturn, but it can take in some cases many years to build back up. And so I'll just point out when I got blown out of the White House, terrible. It took maybe two or three years to regain my footing professionally, regain my footing in the media. And I think what ends up happening is you can't give up. And so I would just tell you if you're having a setback and hopefully your setbacks won't be as public as my setback, but if you're having one, don't give up. Dial into your personality, the grid and your personal.

I've a lot of friends of mine that have been blown to pieces in various situations. I could name anchors that have been fired, people that have been fired from large jobs and businesses, people humiliated in politics. I suffered my humiliation in politics. I've also been fired from companies of early parts of my career. And I think that the resonating message is to just go forward. I think that's the only thing that we can do is just go forward. If you're a true self, over time, you're willing to express that to other people, people will see that and that's when your credibility starts to get regained. Great question. Okay. This is from, Instagram at Brandon Tyler Lee. What do you look for when hiring talent at Salt or Skybridge? So

attitude. I think the number one thing is attitude. We hire so many young people that come into the firm inexperienced. Maybe you don't understand the business of money management, the conference business, how to curate a conference, how to put programs like this together from a production point of view. But attitude, people are willing to learn and people are coachable and people are hungry. those are the ingredients that we're always looking for. Remember, you've got to play on a team. The great irony about life and even the great irony about capitalism, there's a collectivity to life and capitalism.

And so you need a team. You need a team to win a European football championship. You need a team to win an American baseball world series. And certainly in business, you need a team. You can't do everything. And so you've got to have people on your team that are selfless and willing to do the things that you can't do. Remember, you can do anything, but you can't do everything.

Don't forget that. Those are the types of people we're trying to hire. Okay, this is from X. This is Chris V. What's your typical weekday weekend look like and how do you manage everything? So on the weekends, I'm up early, believe it or not. I feel like you've got to get into a schedule. It'll be up early no matter what.

So I'm up early. I'm in the gym first thing in the morning on a Saturday and Sunday. And then I go get myself some coffee. I'm a big reader. So I've got the papers handy. Maybe I go to the store and buy some papers and an egg sandwich. I sit down and do some reading. I'm in the process right now of writing a book.

And so I'll probably spend an hour or two on the weekends, reading and proofing a manuscript that we're constructing right now. And then make time for the family. I think that's ultimately it. I'd like to tell you, I have some like super structured thing, but I don't. I tell people when you think about your schedule, think about it in compartments. Don't overwhelm yourself. You're never going to do as much as you'd like to do in a day,

but you can do a little bit each day. I gave this analogy somewhere a few days ago. I'll share it with you. Picture your time as a glass jar. And let's say you've got sand and rocks. Well, the sand is sort of the things you need to do, but they're not super consequential. And the rocks, the sort of the little tiny boulders are the things that are really big and important to you. So how are you going to put them into this vessel of your time? Well, if you put the sand in first, guess what happens? You can't fit in the rocks. Right? So you've got to put the rocks in first and then put the sand over the rocks where the sand sort of fills in the spaces in between the rocks. And so this is a metaphor of the way you think about your time. Block off things in your schedule for those little tiny boulders and then work around the tiny things that you need to do. But get the boulder things done first if that makes any sense. You two. To Cran 89.

I mean, I just do love these nicknames. I mean, I'm just like at mooch or at Scaramucci. I feel it's too boring. Okay, to Cran 89. If a Democratic president wins the 2008 election, would you be open to a cabinet position, but other position in the administration and an effort to bring the country together and push back on the polarized nature of our politics. So it's a great question.

I'm not really great at politics. I think one of the problems is when you're a politician, you've got to lie a lot. And I think that one of the reasons why we very hard for me to be politicians, because I really don't feel like lying to people. I also got five kids, and I don't want them to have a dad that's a bullshit artist and a liar. So politicians, unfortunately, have to lie. I don't have yet to meet a politician that isn't a liar, unfortunately. Probably all mad at me for saying that, but that's just brutally true.

I guess in cabinet positions, you can be a little bit more honest. Look at these Trump situations, man, where these guys are in like men and women are in massive ass-kissing mode of Donald Trump. I mean, it's sort of revolting. So I don't know. I guess the short answer would be it would depend on the person who got the job and would depend on what they would want me to do. I do enjoy public service and I do want to help people. So I'd be open to it, but I'll tell you, it would have to go through a very thick screening process. Okay, LinkedIn. Ella Outh, hopefully I'm pronouncing this right, Ella Ooth or El Uth, El Uth, L-Uth.

L-Uth Lopez. What is your view on work-like balance? There's no such thing, okay? There's no such thing as work-like balance and there's no such thing as a relationship balance. So you're me out for a second. Somebody says to me, well, you're in a relationship, relationships are 50-50. That's nonsense. Some days you're coming in with 90 and your spouse is coming in with 10. Maybe they have an illness, or if they had a setback in the family or something's going on. And other times, they're coming in with 90. You're coming in with 10. It's never even.

So don't pretend otherwise. You have to be fluid in relationships. And I see, you have to be fluid in your work-life balance. If you looked at me in my 20s, you'd be like, this guy is out of whack. He has absolutely no balance. And I was all work all the time. And the truth of the matter is I needed to do that to get my career started. As my career started to mature and I got a little bit older, I was able to flex more and be

more flexible with a work-life balance. But don't be overly concerned with a work-like balance or a relationship balance. The truth be told, it's never perfect. And you'll never get it right 100%. And I'm a little bit of a workaholic. So I'm probably not the best person to be answering that question, I should say. Okay, let's keep going. Jim Venturi, Instagram. What are you most proud of changing your mind about and how did you get there? Well, I say business crypto was very negative on crypto, didn't really understand it. I'm a traditional finance person. What the hell is this? But I think I'm proud of changing my mind, seeing the opportunity and being what I call neuralie plastic, where you can adapt yourself, have a fixed point of view, not be too prideful, be humble enough to know that you

could get something wrong. I guess politically I would say Donald Trump. I saw some of the virtues of Trump in terms of trying to help, lower middle income people, but I think the overarching weaknesses are related to some of the cruelty, which I don't like. And so I'm proud of myself for being able to speak out against that. You know, I've changed my mind about different things as you get old. You know, Churchill once said, if you are not a Democrat or a liberal, below the age of 40, you have no heart. But if you're not a conservative, after the age of 40, you have no brain. And so there's a little bit of facetiousness in that remark. But you're going to change during your life. You're going to adapt as you get more life experience. I can tell you this. My life experience

is maybe more humble and more psychologically minded and perhaps more empathetic towards others. And I hope that happens to you, and I hope those changes are good for you in positive. All right, let's keep going. X, this is from X, Beat King. All right. What is the latest book you are reading? How much time do you spend reading books a week? So it's three hours a day. Three times seven is 21 hours a week. That's more or less my average. Remember, I'm on planes, driving in the car, listening to books on tape or podcasts, but I'm just talking about books. It's probably 21 hours. I'm just pulling up some books right here that I'm reading contemporaneously. right now. So one I mentioned earlier in this Q&A. It's called The King of Kings by Scott Anderson.

It's an absolutely phenomenal book. I've read The Nazi Mind recently by Lawrence Rees, 12 warnings from history. I thought that was a phenomenal book just about how people can get sucked into things that are quite evil. There's a book I just cracked open. This book was from 2019. It's called Chaos. And it's written by Tom O'Neill. And Tom is an unbelievable writer. He's writing about Charles Manson and he's writing about the CIA and the secret history of the 1960s. Okay, so of course, I was born in 1964, and I don't really remember the 60s other than being four or five in the age of kindergarten. This was an amazing time in U.S. history, lots of tumult and tumultuousness, and a lot of things that are going on today happened to the 1960s. So those are a few books that I'm reading right now

that I would be recommending to you guys. Okay, let's go to YouTube. Cody, C. 8952. I just love to know, Cody, what the 89 and the 52 were all about. But if you yourself could add a handful of people to lead the country with no questions and ask, who would those people be and why? It's a very, very interesting question. You know, listen to me, I would want historians in the mix. I'd want people like Neil Ferguson. I'd want people in the mix like Jamie Diamond. I would want some industrialists in the mix.

It would be a collection of people, frankly. I don't think we get our best people in politics. because politics is very brutal. The politicians have figured out that negative campaigning and maligning the other candidate works. I always say this facetiously, but I think you get the point. Have you ever met a smart politician? Of course, we have a lot of smart politicians, but we beat on them and they beat on each other so badly that we have all these negative opinions of them. But for me, I would want to take some people from the corporate sector, but I would also want to do something that Mike Bloomberg did.

Get some small business leaders in there and get some union leaders and people. that you wouldn't normally put in the mix, but people that are part of the American public that should have a voice in terms of what's going on with American policy. So one of the smartest guys that I've met, who I think we do a great job as president, but we'll never run for president. For somebody different reasons, is Jamie Diamond. I just think he's brilliant on a lot of different things, and he's also a smart, caring guy. But those are the types of people I would want.

Remember, in the U.S. now, these are a popularity contest. They're not hiring processes anymore. American people don't sit around like a board of directors trying to hire a CEO, try to pick somebody that's going to entertain them or keep things interesting for the next four years. I'm not sure if that's the best way to do this, but that's where we are now. So we're going to need somebody that can capture the people's imagination, but also have some understanding of history and policy. Okay, let's keep going.

LinkedIn, St. Bruce McGuire. What are your views on the federal budget cuts to U.S. research universities and the potential for those cuts to impair America's ability to Internet, innovate and lead. I mean, it's horrific. So we know that two things that the American government does reasonably well that has really boosted American productivity and boosted our culture, boosted our standing around the world is infrastructure and research and development. And so the U.S. government putting the money into the universities and getting a real bang for its buck in terms of innovation, drug therapy discoveries, ideas around industrial production, all different

types of things that we've done over the last hundred or so years have been magnificent for the United States. And so cutting that stuff back, it's a demultiplication effect on the society. Very, very bad. I wish it wasn't happening. There's other things that we could do to manage the budget. This is the worst thing that we could do. It has a demultipplication effect on our intellectual capital and our growth and our innovation. So, yeah, I hate it, by the way. So, anyway, hopefully it made that clear. Instagram, feelings overrated, but you've got overrated there is a zero. So I guess feelings are overrated. I don't know. I want to be true to your feelings and mine. But if you want to switch careers or passions midlife, what advice would you give?

How about to do it? That's the advice. Don't overthink shit. Okay, you're going to be dead before you know it. If you want to do something different, go ahead and do it. I believe that life is a journey, life is an adventure. I've done so many different things that I never thought I would be doing. But I always look at it and say, you know, F that. Let's just do it. Okay. So that's my advice for feelings overrated. Trust your feelings. Feelings overrated. Okay. X at Lucky Luciano. All right. I mean, I love these names. Looking back on your remarkable journey, can you pinpoint a specific light to finding moment or pivotal event that significantly authored the course of your life path, either in your career or other aspects of life? I definitely can. And I can tell you exactly

what it was Lucky Luciano. It was April of 1982. So there I was as an 18-year-old. I want you to picture this. My hair was blown back like Tony Minero and Saturday night. fever. I knew every dance move back in the 80s and 70s. And I was driving around in my Camaro, which I purchased from a Sonoco dealer, like a Sonoco gas station. It was a 1979 Berlin at a Camaro. It was a burgundy car with a burgundy interior. I mean, you can't make this shit up. It had cigarette burns in there. I didn't care. I wanted to have that car. It was a hot car at that time. And I was somewhat wayward. And I guess the SAT word I would use is desultory. You know, I was all over the place, not doing anything meaningful. And when I got into Tufts University and my parents thought

it was spelled T-O-U-G-H-S, my father handed me a check and it was a $10,000 check. I think I've talked about this before, but my dad had cashed in his union life insurance policy and said, we don't really have the money to send you to this school. Your guidance counselor is telling me that you should go to this school. Here's a check. I get you started. You're going to have to work and you have to take on some school loans. I just remember thinking, my God, my dad is canceling or cashing in his life insurance policy to help me get my life started. I got to take this stuff seriously. And it really set into motion the wheels of really good habits. I went on to study at Tufts, became summa cum laude there. I'm trying to be boastful or anything like that, but it was just

tremendous amount of hard work in time. Ended up getting into Harvard and then that opened up a pathway for me. But it was that moment that I really started building the habits of success. I'm still driving around in the Camaro. I don't want to pretend that I wasn't, but I was, I stopped being a little bit of idiot and I started becoming more focused. Great question. Okay, YouTube, spooky people seven. Well, happy early Halloween, spooky people. What are the top three people alive today who you admire and respect and why? All right. So I'm going to leave family members out of this, right? Because I don't want to, you know, do that. Let's talk about public figures that I respect and why. As I mentioned, Jamie. Jamie Diamond is someone I respect a lot. Amazing career. Very, very smart person, very wise. There's a

gentleman by the name of Bob Castrignano. If he's listening to this podcast, he'll probably laugh. But he's my old boss. He just celebrated his 75th birthday. Bob Castrignano retired from Goldman Sacks in 2001. But for the last 24 years, he went back to work at a place called Sandler-on-Neil, which is now merged called Piper Sandler. But Sanler O'Neill was devastated in the 9-11 attacks 24 years ago. And Bob came out of retirement to go work there and to help rebuild that business. So he's a mentor at friend, someone I usually admire, and he's actually somebody I call when bad stuff is happening to me. He's got really good perspective, really good advice. I guess somebody that maybe you would know that I admire from a distance. I can't really talk about their personal lives or their foibles,

but is a very wonderful historian by the name of Neil Ferguson. And again, I would recommend reading some of Neil's books. Since we did talk about crypto early here, the assent of money, You know, again, remember, when you admire people, as Churchill would say, there is no hero to a man's valet. Okay, we all have our strengths. We all have our weaknesses. But when you're admiring people, I admire Neil's wit. I admire his intellect. I admire his writing style.

And I've learned so much from him over the years. Of course, there's many other people that I do admire. But those are some of the people that come to mind from a number of different categories in my life. Okay, LinkedIn at John Kelly, when you look at the turbulent state of American politics and the economy, what is going well and what gives you hope for the future? What a great question. So I am eternally optimistic about America because America is a group of risk takers. America is a nerily plastic society, meaning we are unbelievably adaptive. We go from an agrarian culture to a technology culture, a manufacturing culture. We flipped the switch and ended things like slavery,

which is a very horrific stain in our society. We're still dealing with the after effects of it in terms of racism and racial biases and prejudices. But generally, if you said, okay, here's the world, and the world is basically tribal, and the world is basically boundaries associated with things like mountains and rivers. And there's been these territorial balances over the 5,000 years of human history. And then 500 years ago, the Europeans enter the new world. And this place called America gets put together where it's a melting pot. There's multi-ethnic, multi-religious groups of people that arrive in America. And America to them is an idea as much as it's anything else. It's certainly not a bloodline. It's certainly not a historical territorial thing like it was in Europe or even parts

of Asia. And so for me, when I think about America that way, we're tribal right now, but it's not as bad as it was in the Civil War. We're having rough times in aspects of our economy, not as bad as it was in the Great Depression. And we don't have a hot kinetic war, super hot kinetic war going on for America right now. Thank God. We have all this massive innovation coming, which is going to lead to lots of economic progress and potentially economic abundance for people. I think it's just incumbent upon our political leaders to make sure that this is, policies are put in place that people can benefit from this. So not that you want to hear all my political philosophy, but I'm a man that believes in equal opportunity. So we have to have a platform of equal opportunity for people

irrespective of where they're born, but unlimited outcomes. I certainly don't want equal outcomes. I believe in a system where industry, creativity, economic risk, economic rent, like the flow of profits, if you've got a great idea, they should flow to the owners of that. I have no problem having the Jeff Bezos is or the Elon Musk's in the world. I just don't want them once they get to that platform to make it harder or steeper for other people to rise. This is something that Teddy Roosevelt understood better than anybody in terms of what he did to help form and create the blueprint for the American middle class. So I'm very optimistic. I think we'll get through this populist wave in the country and get onto something that I think is a little bit more beneficial to the American people.

Okay, Roscoe 44, this is coming from X. X at Roscoe 44. Do you think the way Gavin Newsom is trolling Trump on social media ultimately good or bad for his political career? Good. Good for his political career. Take risks. Okay, I think he's trying to show, I think he's doing a very good job of the absurdity of Donald Trump. I mean, we've inoculated ourselves, we've immunized ourselves to the type of nonsense that's coming from what arguably should be the most august political position in our times. I mean, the American presidency over the last 80 years was the beacon of hope, the leader of the free world. There was an institution to that presidency and there was a respect and guidelines to that president. And of course, President Trump is breaking all of those norms. You may like him for doing that or dislike him, but I do think that there is something about norms that are beneficial to a society. I think Gavin Newsom is just trying to show you how absurd it all is. And he's taking risks. You know, something that Vice President Harris didn't do was take a lot of risks in the campaign. Now, no fault of her own, she only had 107 days to try to beat Donald Trump. But one of the ways to beat him was to take more risk. And so I applaud Gavin for taking these risks. I think they'll ultimately be good for his career. Again, these are. my opinions. Last question. Last question in the period. Question number 20. LinkedIn. Add Shauna La Tamay Tamios. And Shaunaela, I didn't pronounce it right. I'm sorry. County from Long Island, you have to forgive all of my elocution. Actually, no. I remember when I was a kid, I was dating somebody and the mom said to me that it had an elocution problem. I was like,

I don't even know what that means. I thought it had something to do with electrification. So I had actually go look it up. So here I am. 50 years later, I still have an elocution problem. But anyway, what has helped to keep you centered during difficult moments in your career? Such a great question. I think you've got to be true to yourself. It's a cliche to say that to thy own self be true. But I'll just say this. When you're getting your ass kicked in your career or there's a setback or someone's maligning you on the internet

or I've had financial obituaries written about me during bad times at Skybridge, I think the number one thing you've got to do is dial into yourself. I'm at a desk right now where I was having a really big. bad time in 2021. And I took out a index card here at this desk. And I wrote down all the problems that I was having. But then I wrote down all of the assets that we had at Skybridge. I wrote down all the assets that we had in terms of personal growth and things that we could do to make the situation better. So dial into yourself, love yourself, talk to yourself in the right way. Brain is listening to yourself talk. So don't say bad stuff about yourself. You've got enough people on planet Earth that are going to do

that. Get up in the morning and say, it's going to be a great day. Good things are going to happen to me. And, you know, you're going to create positive karma for other people. And that'll help you get through lots of difficult times. And by the way, you will have difficult times. I think that's the point. We sometimes look at Instagram and these very filtered lives of others. We're living ourselves and unfiltered like looking at these filtered lives. They must not have any problems. Trust me, they got problems. The person that tells you they don't have problems is the biggest, you know-what, artist on earth. That's the most mendacious person that you're going to meet. So we all got a series of problems, rich or poor, set your expectations right, have a gratitude list. And when bad things are

happening, go back to that list and you'll find your true center there. Okay, that's a wrap on today's Q&A, an episode of Open Book. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. Remember, I'm reading all these comments. I love hearing from what's on your mind. I was on LinkedIn the other night and somebody in the Q&A said, do you actually read this stuff? And I replied, yes, in bold capital letter. So I do read the stuff because I want to connect with you guys. I want you to feel that there is a connection here that we are paying attention. And remember, I love hearing what's on your mind. So keep the questions coming. If you feel that we've missed your question, we'll be back next month with another round of answers. And in the meantime, don't forget to subscribe, share, and leave a review

if you've enjoyed this episode. Until then, let's keep the conversation going, and I'll see you next time. But please subscribe to our channel. Trust me, it helps the algorithm, helps us get our messages out. So thank you very much. I am Anthony Scaramucci,

and that was Open Book. Thank you so much for listening. If you like what you hear, tell your friends, and make sure you hit follow or subscribe wherever you listen to your podcast. While you're there, please leave us a rating or review.

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