Open Book with Anthony Scaramucci - The Investment Masterclass with David Rubenstein

Episode Date: June 14, 2023

In today's episode, Anthony talks with David Rubenstein, legendary investor and co-founder of The Carlyle Group. Together they discuss David’s new book, How to Invest: Masters on the Craft. David ...shares his outlook on crypto, what investments he's currently excited about, our political sphere - and both get personal on their regrets and biggest lessons on Wall Street. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:22 free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Hello, I'm Anthony Scaramucci, and this is over. open book where I talk with some of the brightest minds out there about everything surrounding the written word, from authors and historians to figures in entertainment, neuroscientists, political activists, and of course, Wall Street. Sorry, I can't resist. Before we get into today's episode, if you haven't already, please hit follow or subscribe wherever you get your podcast and leave us a review. We all love a review, even the bad ones. I want to hear the parts you're enjoying or how we can do
Starting point is 00:01:05 better. You know I can roll with the punches, so let me know. Anyways, let's get to it. So today on an open book, we're speaking with David Rubenstein, co-founder and co-chairman of the Carlisleau Group. Carlylea was established in 1987. It manages over $325 billion from 26 offices around the world and is one of the largest and most successful private investment firms ever. David's latest book, How to Invest Masters on the Craft, distills everything. he's learned about the art of investing over 35 years from hedge funds and real estate, cryptocurrency investing, ESG, and more. Welcome, David. It's great to have you here. I want to start immediately with your new book, How to Invest Masters on the Craft. Your other books, every which one of them
Starting point is 00:02:07 that I have read are absolutely fantastic. I know this book is going to go in that same realm. I'd like you to discuss it. Why did you decide now was the time to share this wisdom on? on investing after writing the book on leadership in America, et cetera. Well, as you know, I've been in the investing world for about 35 years. While I was not the principal investor at Carlyle, other people did it, I was on all the investment committees of relevance. And so I picked up a fair bit, and then I've been involved in the nonprofit investment world in recent years by being on investment committees.
Starting point is 00:02:39 And I've known a lot of the very most famous investors in the country from other philanthropic or other investment things. So I just thought it would be an interesting thing to do. to interview a number of them and take their lessons and put them together. The book is designed for people that might want to be investors, people who are doing some investing now but aren't great investors and people who are really talented investors but want to learn more about the great investors. Well, you chronicle many investors. Let's go to Warren Buffett. He made his first stock purchase at age 11. Jim Simons was focused on math, not investing. I believe you also had Paula
Starting point is 00:03:15 in the book, Paula Valent. Her career was in initially in art. So tell me, is investing tied to creativity? Is there a form of artistry to investing? What did you learn in terms of putting the book together? Well, I guess you could say it's a bit of artistry, but basically the common characteristics that I have observed are that the great investors are people that have a facility for numbers. They're probably reasonably good in math. They try to do some other things in early in life. Very few of them, like Warren Buffett, were investing at the age of 11 or so, that's rare. They tend to come from, I would say, middle class families, not the poorest families and not the wealthiest families. They tend to be willing to make the decisions themselves.
Starting point is 00:03:58 They don't like to delegate. They tend to be willing to go against conventional wisdom. That's the most important characteristic, is to go against what the conventional wisdom tells you you should do. And those people that have gone against conventional wisdom have tended to make really good decisions and become famous investors. Give me one example of going against conventional wisdom where you say, wow, that really worked out for the man or woman. Well, one of the most famous trades made in the last century in the latter part of the last century was when George Soros broke the Bank of England, as we say, and he got the pound to be devalued. That was really based on advice that he had from one of his people running his funds, Stan Drucken Miller. And at the time, people didn't think that Bank of England was going to devalue the pound.
Starting point is 00:04:41 And therefore, nobody else was really betting that. And as a result, he was able to get a relatively inexpensive bet against the pound. And it turned out to make a staggering amount of money at the time, a billion dollars is what they made in profit. John Paulson, who you know, John Paulson was a person who bet an enormous amount of money that the subprime credit market would default, essentially. And he made $20 billion profit on that, maybe the most profitable single trade in Wall Street history. But nobody else was really making that bet. Let's go to Stan for a second. If you interview Stan for the book, Stan Drucken Miller, someone, you and I both know very well. He was worried about that trade, wasn't he, David? Well, on the pound trade?
Starting point is 00:05:24 Yes. Well, it was his idea, and then Soros heard about it. He was kind of running the quantum fund for Soros, and Soros would dabble from time to time, and he would say, well, geez, if it's such a good idea, let's put more and more money into it. Soros's major investment premise over the years was, if you have a really good idea, put everything you have into it because you don't have really great ideas that often. And so when Soros heard about the idea, they increased the amount of money they had put into it. That was 30 years ago, if I remember correctly.
Starting point is 00:05:54 So we're talking, say it would be several billion dollars of today's dollars. Does persistence pay off against conventional wisdom? There's also people that have gone against the tide and have gotten hurt, David. Yes. Well, you can always go against conventional wisdom, and sometimes you're going to be wrong. Sometimes the conventional wisdom is right. So you have to know when the conventional wisdom is going to be right and when it's going to be wrong. John Kenneth Galbraith, the famous Harvard economist, once said that the conventional wisdom in Washington is always wrong.
Starting point is 00:06:25 It may be right. But a conventional wisdom in the markets is not always wrong, and sometimes the conventional wisdom is right. And therefore, when you go against a conventional wisdom, you can make a lot of money if you happen to be right. A good example is people that bet on Amazon and Google. One of the guys in the book, Mike Moritz, who is the head of Sequoia, they bet on Google and they bet on Amazon. and turned out to be pretty good bet. And then, you know, at the time, many people didn't think those companies were going to get very far. I'm looking at today's conventional wisdom, which is that the cryptocurrency markets are a bunch of bunk, Bitcoin, other cryptocurrencies.
Starting point is 00:07:05 They've had a precipitous fall over the last year. What are your thoughts there about conventional wisdom and cryptocurrency? Conventional wisdom is often made up by people who are older. And so they're not usually the ones that spot the newest trends. Newest trends don't usually come from 70-year-olds. They usually come from people in their 20s. And so it's interesting how many people in their 20s seem to think that crypto has some purpose to it and some value other than just speculation.
Starting point is 00:07:35 And I think they're probably right. And this is the reason. Right now, many people fail, the younger people, that the current generation, my generation and your generation have helped to devalue the dollar. And as a result, it's not worth what it once was. So maybe a currency that isn't so dependent on the follies of government might be better. Crypto also is something you can trade without anybody knowing that you have traded and you can own it without people knowing you own it.
Starting point is 00:07:58 And take the Russian oligarchs, for example. Many of them probably wish they owned cryptocurrencies because their assets have been confiscated in many cases by the Western governments. While many Chinese people probably are saying, wait a second, suppose China invades Taiwan, what will be their repercussions against Chinese oligarchs if there are such a group of people? well, maybe their assets in the U.S. might be frozen. Well, one of the ways to prevent that is to have assets that nobody knows you have, which would be cryptocurrencies. So I don't think crypto is worthless. I have not bought cryptocurrencies myself. I have invested in companies
Starting point is 00:08:32 that service the industry. And for this book, I interviewed Mike Novagrats, who you may know is a big proselytizer for crypto. He has, he's one of the biggest owners, I think, of Bitcoin. It's going down a bit from where he had it at the peak, but it's way above what it, what he paid for it. Yeah, well, I want to go there because you interviewed Larry Fink, John Paulson, who's a crypto skeptic. Obviously, Mike is a crypto bull. Larry Fink told me at the Al-Aryon Hotel in the Four Seasons in Abu Dhabi that he didn't like Bitcoin. But if his clients wanted Bitcoin, he would begin the process of setting up products related to it. What do you think those three brilliant people are? They're all very different people, but they have very different
Starting point is 00:09:16 opinions on cryptocurrency. Help us synthesize where you think they are. Larry runs the biggest money management company in the world, and he got that way, in part, by listening to what clients want. And so if clients want to trade cryptocurrencies, I think he might do what Jamie Diamond has done, which is to say, I'm not sure this is such a great thing. In fact, it may be going to zero, but I'm willing to provide an option to our clients. So if they want to trade in it without our telling them they should, that option is available. So, at John Paulson's case, John is running a family office now, his own money, and he doesn't see any value to crypto, and he's very vehement about it. But, you know, lots of times people who make great decisions, as he did on the credit default swaps and subprime mortgages, sometimes they make mistakes.
Starting point is 00:10:00 So I don't know what the right answer is going to be, but I do think it's not going away anytime soon. And, you know, you probably know this better than I, but it seems to me a lot of people who are conservative, libertarian people and younger tend to think this is a good thing. kind of something they've lobbied Congress to not regulate unduly. And as a result, I think Congress has listened and Congress is not pushing to the SEC or the CFTC to do much regulating more than they're already doing. One of the things that you talk about in the book is regrets. I believe that you interviewed Ray Dalio, asked him about his regrets. You talked about Ron Barron and the challenges that he had getting his business started. Tell us about how great investors handle their bad decisions because none of us are perfect, especially you think about it from a baseball perspective.
Starting point is 00:10:47 You don't have to be perfect to be a great investor. You know, I talk about in the book some of my regrets, you know, I'm not putting money in Facebook when Mark Zuckerberg was at Harvard and I knew about it or basically selling the shares in Amazon right after it went public because I didn't really think it would get very far. I kind of harbor my regrets for about 20 to 30 years, whereas really great investors, they go into the next thing and they don't even think back on it. I know some investors that, you know, made mistakes and they just get out of it and they go on to the next thing and they don't think about it much. I just don't have that ability.
Starting point is 00:11:19 You know, Buffett talks about his regrets. You know, Buffett had the Disney trade on in the 60s basically said if I had just held the Disney a stack through the ups and downs. Do you think we make mistakes sometimes? I sold my Microsoft as an example. I bought it in 1990. And during the bomber years when it was flatlining, I sold my Microsoft. I paid the taxes on my gain. It would have been way better for me to have just ridden through that,
Starting point is 00:11:46 given how well Microsoft has done in the last 10 years. That's one of my regrets. I'm just wondering, do we hold our investments long enough, David? Well, Warren Buffett has made a large part of his fortune by not selling because he avoids transaction costs and taxes. And Ron Barron, who is in the book as the same philosophy, get good companies, get companies where the CEOs own a fair amount of stock, and stay with them through thick and thin unless you've made a gigantic mistake and you realize
Starting point is 00:12:13 that they were not as good as you thought. But generally, stay with companies. Warren Buffett famously says he doesn't sell things. Now, he does sell things from time to time, but generally, he's not a person who likes to sell. So I would say that's a good way to kind of make money, which is to know what you're doing, buy it and hold on to it because you avoid all the transaction costs and, of course, you avoid taxes. Yeah, no, I just want to. I think, when I think about my mistakes or I have I have sold to early many high-quality companies, and it could have been from boredom or impetuosity, which I regret. I want to ask you about the way you broke up the book. You took it into three different sections. One was mainstream investing. One was alternative investing. And then cutting-edge
Starting point is 00:12:57 investments. Did you notice similarities, similar characteristics and principles across all three? Or how do those three different investment genres differ from each other? Well, traditional is really stocks and bonds and traditional real estate and things like that. And that's what people have been investing in for hundreds of years. It's fairly well known as the core of a basic investment portfolio. In the 1970s or so, venture capital came along, hedge funds came along, private equity came along. And these categories now called alternative are not really so alternative to mainstream because anybody that's got a portfolio today of any consequence will have these so-called alternative assets in that portfolio. And they would also include
Starting point is 00:13:39 things like growth capital, opportunistic real estate, and so forth. I had another category, which I gave the name to a cutting edge. These are things which people are doing to get high returns as they are with alternatives, but they're newer. So ESG, for example, or SPACs, which may not be that attractive today, or infrastructure investing, or things like that, which are much newer, haven't yet proven over 20, 30, 40 years to be as valuable and as good an investment as say the alternatives are, but no doubt they probably will over a period of time. And crypto is in that category as well. Crypto is something that people, even love or hate, very rarely do people say, yeah, I'm not sure about crypto. Yeah, no, it's interesting. It's definitely a binary
Starting point is 00:14:24 response to cryptocurrency investing. Throughout the whole conversations that you've had, the 35 years of investing, distill it for me. What's the best people? piece of investment advice you've ever received? And what is the investment advice that you would be giving to your grandchildren? Well, my grandchildren are two and four, so I'm not sure they're going to remember my advice. But look, the most important investment advice that anybody can get, I think, is diversify. Don't put all your eggs in one basket and know what you're investing in. In other words, don't just listen to a stock tip somebody might have given you, read something and learn about it. Make sure you know what you're getting into.
Starting point is 00:15:06 people just don't read enough about it or they just rely on some information. It's not very reliable. Also, one of the most important mistakes to avoid and one of the most important lessons to learn is that when the markets go up, that's not a great time to get in. And when the markets are go down, that's not a great time to get out. People who really make money generally do the opposite. You get into the markets when they're depressed and there's blood in the streets and you get out of the markets when they're at high valuations. They're not sustainable. That is the best advice you can give anybody. All right. Well, I want to shift gears for a second because I find your worldview fascinating. And what I did was prior to this interview I sent out to our fan base, our followers,
Starting point is 00:15:48 what questions would they have for you? And what was interesting about it is everybody wants you, David, to predict the future. Everybody sees you as a seer. It's impossible to predict the future. But I'm going to ask you some trying hypotheticals. Okay. When I was at the White House, I got asked three or four hypotheticals in the Brady press room, and I quickly decided not to answer those, but this is fun in games. And so I'm going to ask you a few, okay? Okay. Looking at the U.S. economy, David, should we be worried about low interest rates and the rise
Starting point is 00:16:21 of debt we've been incurring over the last three decades. And just let's go back to the George Bush administration. We went from George Washington to George Bush, $7 trillion. And now we've gone from Barack Obama to Joe Biden. And I think we racked up, you tell me, $22 to $23 trillion. Should we be worried about this? I think we should. I think historically, when you have too much debt, it's not good.
Starting point is 00:16:46 Either your personal investments or government investments. But for recent history, we've kept interest rates so low that the U.S. government can sustain. I think it's about $28 trillion of debt when you count the internal and external debt. And now that interest rates are going up, the government debt is going to be much more expensive. So I think in the end, it's not going to be a happy ending for people, but I've been saying that for a decade or more, and I've been wrong because we've been able to sustain the debt,
Starting point is 00:17:12 and the markets have not been that upset with the large amount of federal debt. At some point, I think we will pay that price, though. Is your vehicle stopping like it should? Does it squeal or grind when you break? Don't miss out on summer break deals at O'Reilly Auto Parts. Okay, so I'm worried about it as well, and I also think these interest rate rising, you know, you get 100 basis point interest rate rise on that kind of debt. It starts to absorb a very big part of the tax revenue. So is there a scenario where you could envision where the United States
Starting point is 00:17:51 could go into deficit reduction, or do you think we're caught now in this spiral or always have deficits and therefore levels of devaluation? There's only a couple ways you can deal with the debt we have, which is staggering when you think about it. And now the level of debt we have is, you know, more than 100% of GDP. There are only a few countries that have debt that's more than 100% of GDP. A good example of one is Italy, which is not probably a role model for us. I would say that there are five ways out of this problem. One, you increase taxes. Nobody likes that. Two, you cut spending. Nobody likes that. Three, default on the debt. Nobody likes that. Four, you inflate your way out of it, which is probably what we're going to be doing at some point.
Starting point is 00:18:33 or five, you devalue the currency, basically. And we're in the combination of eventually we're going to devalue the currency. We're also going to inflate our way out of it. So it's not a good solution. The best solution would, of course, be to cut spending in some way and to, you've got to do that. You've got to cut benefits somehow. As you know, 90% or so of the federal budget is entitlements, defense spending, and interest. And there's very little left that's discretionary at this point.
Starting point is 00:19:01 So it's hard to cut. You know, one of the things that you've done an amazing job, in my opinion, is staying out of the political strife and the political fray, despite living in Washington and despite working for a Democratic president in the early part of your career. Is that something we should be doing, David, as business people? Should we just stay out of politics and let the politicians handle it? Or do you think that businesses now, because politics is such a big part of our life, and we're basically in the high tax states minority partners in our own lives that we should be involved in politics. What's your thoughts there? I am different than the others. I'm not against business people
Starting point is 00:19:40 or business leaders getting involved in government and politics and lobbying one way or the other, but I just don't feel comfortable giving large sums of money to politicians and so forth. So I don't give money to any politician for anything. And that takes me out of the game of being influential with some politicians, but I try to take my money and do philanthropic things with it and maybe it has some impact, maybe not. But no, I'm not, I just stay out of politics. But I'm not saying that's, that's ideal for everybody. There's some really good public-minded citizens to CEOs that give money to politicians, and they obviously, they want to have politicians listen to them. I don't think that's terrible. But you have to admit that the level of money in politics today is so staggering
Starting point is 00:20:19 that if we were a banana republic, these campaign contributions will be called bribery. I mean, when you get a million or two million or three million dollars from one individual donor, you know, I won't call a bribery, but I would say it's certainly not the ideal situation. So you've lived in Washington, you've worked in politics, you've worked around political leaders. Do you think that the current tribalism and identity politics that we're struggling with in the society now, can that fever be broken? Or do you think it gets worse as the years progressed, David? Or what would have to happen to break that fever? The only way it's going to be broken is if you were eliminate through some of constitutional amendment, which is unlikely,
Starting point is 00:21:01 politics being sort of penitle money. Because money is the mother's milk of politics that is said, as it is said. As you probably know, from your experience in Washington dealing with politicians, they raise money incessantly. Members of Congress on the House side say when they spend 40% of their time calling people for money. Why do they need so much money? Well, one, if you have more money, you tend to win.
Starting point is 00:21:22 Two, if you have more money, you have money to give away to other politicians who maybe curry favor and for seniority kind of positions or committee, chairmanships. Three, you also tend to scare people away from running with you. If you have a big bank account, people may not run against you. And fourth, you can keep the money. The law now is that you can keep the money that's not expanded. You can't use it for personal purposes. But for example, if let's suppose you want to hire your daughter to be your campaign manager, you can give her a salary. If you want to rent one of your own buildings for your campaign headquarters, you can use that money. So it's really not all that impersonal. You can really do a lot of personal.
Starting point is 00:21:59 things with the money that's left over. So it's not a great situation, honestly. And as you know, politicians love the jobs they have. Other than the jobs don't pay very much, but they love them. And my experience is that when members of Congress lose an election or they retire, they're never so happy as when they're out of office. But they're afraid that they're going to be thrown out of office somehow involuntarily. And very often they do anything to stay in office, even though the compensation is really embarrassingly low. Okay. Listen, I, I, I, I love your insight on all this stuff. I should have listened to you 10 or 15 years ago. I think I got myself too deep into the political neck. There's always salvation. And are you still
Starting point is 00:22:39 really actively involved now in any kind of politics? Not really. I mean, I've given to some of my personal favorites, but I don't organize or raise money like I used to, say, 10 or 15 years ago. I think that that ship has passed for me. I'm trying to just focus on our, our course. business. But remember, like you, having come from humble means, when I got my job at Goldman in the private banking area, I didn't really have many contacts. And I, since I had never been a member of a country club and my dad was an hourly worker, one of the ways to meet influential people was through politics. So for myself, at 25, the first check that I wrote actually was to Rudolph Giuliani. He was running for mayor in 1989. He lost that election to David Dinkins,
Starting point is 00:23:25 which was actually, believe it or not quite helpful to me because I was able to build a relationship with the soon-to-be mayor of New York. And when he won in 93, I was at Goldman Sachs, and that was actually very good for me. And not only was I able to park anywhere I wanted in New York City, David, but he introduced me to a lot of wealthy and influential people, which helped me build my career. So I'd always had a tie to politics, but I went over the line, which was a mistake by me, which, you know, I should have just stayed on the line of entrepreneurship intersecting with politics. It's not okay. So I wouldn't. That's me. No, no. I'm not castigating myself. I'm just being observant. Two last questions, sir. When you think about
Starting point is 00:24:06 where we are right now, current landscape, economy, global economy, politics, pandemics, is there a slam dunk out there? You know, a place where you would absolutely put your money and you'd say, okay, that's going to be a slam dunk given everything that's going on in our society. Or are there too any unmoons to make that. It depends on what the rate of return is that you're looking for. But I'd say if you can get in the best venture funds, that the most highly experienced venture funds, that's probably a pretty good thing because they tend to be doing extremely well. And even though they're down a little bit now, probably come back. They're very talented and the best funds in Silicon Valley.
Starting point is 00:24:43 I'd say giving your money to pretty good money managers that know what they're doing and have very conservative outlooks can probably be helpful and not losing things. I tell people, the most important thing, if you have a lot of money, is not lose it. And so the best way not to lose it is to be very conservative. You know, a lot of people make fortunes building widgets or building this or that. They think they're geniuses and investments, but they realize they're not. And so don't try to make a great fortune in the investing world. Just get solid returns every year and it compounds quite nicely. Okay, fair enough. Anything to avoid? You would say, okay, you got to stay away from this.
Starting point is 00:25:16 This is toxic. Well, at the moment, I think if you don't know what you're doing in crypto, you should be very careful about putting too much of your money in because it can be very volatile in my view. But, you know, avoid crypto if you're not experienced or thinking about it. Or don't put you much money into it. Yeah, I would say not put too much money into it, but I would also say you have to have a long time arising given the volatility of the asset. Okay, my last question is broken up into three categories, sir. All right.
Starting point is 00:25:46 Okay. The best business book you've ever read, you can't say one of your own, although that's going to be one of the best probably in 2022, the best business you've ever read. Well, there's a book called Snowball that was written about Warren Buffett, I think was really, really good. And then there was a book many years ago about somewhat similar to my current book called Money Masters by John Train, which was about the leading money managers and that era, I think the 1960s and 70s or so. Those are two really good business books.
Starting point is 00:26:16 He also wrote a successor to Money Masters specifically about Warren Buffett. in 1988, which was actually also an amazing book. Okay, those are good ones. One history book, sir, you're a historian, you're a history buff. Favorite history book? I would say a really good book is on Charles Lindberg by Scott Berg. He won the Pulitzer Prize, and it's an incredible story about Lindberg's life. And then after it won the Pulitzer Prize, it turned out that the author found out by happenstance that Lindberg had fathered seven children out of his marriage with two different German women who were sisters and didn't even know that they were each having separate affairs with Charles Lindberg. And the biographer didn't, didn't know this until after the book came out.
Starting point is 00:27:01 An incredible book. Yeah, I read that book, M. Scott Berg, who was a great biography. Lindbergh, obviously was an interesting person because of his whole America First. He was one of the true first America Firsters, if you will. He used to give Franklin Roosevelt a hard time. And we've got remnants of that happening today. Okay, last part of the last question. Your favorite fiction, it's your favorite fiction book, David? I guess I have a home in Ann Tuckett, so I guess I would say Moby Dick. Okay. That's a great one, obviously.
Starting point is 00:27:32 That is a, you know, everything is in that book. A mockingbird is also a great work of fiction, I think, as well. I love those two. I always recommend to people Herman Wolk's two books, The Winds of War and War and Remembrance. I don't know if you remember those. Of course, they were great books. and he wrote him when he was relatively, he was older than I am now. Yeah, he did a great job in those books.
Starting point is 00:27:57 If you've read War and Peace, they have a little bit of a taste of those books are in there. All right, well, as always, it's fantastic. Thank you very much. I enjoyed it. It's a masterclass on investing. It's a brilliant book sharing not only David's hard earned wisdom and insights, but also the insights of some very great investors, including Larry Fink, Mary Callahan Erdos, John Paulson, Mike Novagrats, Ray Dalio, and more, whether you're brand new to investing or a seasoned investment professional, several hundred years of experience in that one tone. It's a great read, and I certainly recommend it to everybody. So I interviewed one of the greatest investors of all time. The guy's name is David Rubenstein, and he's a dear friend, and he asked me a question that I want to ask you, okay?
Starting point is 00:28:58 when did you think I was going to go into investing? Didn't you want me to be a lawyer, Ma? Did I want you to be a lawyer? No, I want my children to be what they want to be because if you pick what you want to be, then you're usually successful at it. If you pick my son David picked an electrical engineer, he did Clemens two years, he hated it,
Starting point is 00:29:21 and then he became an investor, and he did very well. Right, that's true. So I feel as though that you have to pick what you want, Otherwise, you're not successful at it. Right. Okay. So what's the best piece of investment advice, Ma? Like who you are.
Starting point is 00:29:36 You have to like yourself so that you can climb the right way. You have to look in the mirror and tell yourself your handsome and look beautiful. Eventually, you believe that and you get tough from it. So really the best investment advice is to invest in yourself, right? To believe in yourself and to believe in yourself. You know, when you're making the stakes, make a correction and make an adaptation. what you are. And I think that you know who you are.
Starting point is 00:30:01 And that's why you're so successful. And you don't differentiate the people if they have it or they don't. And you will help someone in the family. I can't say the name. Survive life right now from a bed, no practice doctor. Yeah, no, I know. I'm working on that. So, all right, but let me ask you.
Starting point is 00:30:20 People don't realize this. You didn't go to college, but you read a lot of books. So what are some of your favorite books? What about like the Catherine Graham book? You remember the book about Catherine Graham? Yeah. I read the Washington Post because her husband was bipolar. Right.
Starting point is 00:30:37 He died and she took over the business and she became very successful because she learned from him being bipolar. And she accepted him for what he was. And so when he died, she learned all his techniques with people that are bipolar. You see very smart. Yeah. And he, Philip Graham. He committed suicide in the basement of their house, and she wrote about it very honestly, right? So Catherine Graham's memoir is one of your favorite books.
Starting point is 00:31:03 What are some of your other favorite books, Ma? Ben-Go. I think that Ben-go was a fabulous artist, and I had a table book of him, and I read the book from cover to cover. And he was also bipolar, and he did a painting of flowers, which were beautiful colors. And I think that's how we got some of the colors that he produced. his painting and he did another painting of wild horses and I used to horseback ride when I was young and I loved the painting of the wild horses and I found him very, very interesting even though he cut his ear off when he was doing his last painting. All right. What else? Any other books,
Starting point is 00:31:42 well, I like makeup. So there's a book that's called Simply Oils and it tells you the kind of oils that are good for your skin. And I did makeup for 10 years and I like to read about makeup that comes out what it does for your skin because people say it's a myth, but it's not a myth. Oil is very important. When you use oils on your skin, it gives your skin a shimmer and you don't use a washcloth. You use the pump and you use your hands. Sometimes if you use a washcloth, you dry it up your skin. Right.
Starting point is 00:32:16 All right, Mom. All right. So you just loaded with new information. You know, you're the best. I'm going to come over and see you a little bit. I just working right now. All right. I love you, Ma.
Starting point is 00:32:25 Thanks for joining the show. I am Anthony Scaramucci, and that was Open Book. Thank you 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. If you want to connect with me or chat more about the discussions, it's at Scaramucci on Twitter or Instagram.
Starting point is 00:32:49 You can also text me at plus 1, 917, 909-29-29-966. I'd love to hear from you. I'll see you back here next week.

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