The Jordan Harbinger Show - 204: Scott Galloway | Solving the Algebra of Happiness

Episode Date: May 28, 2019

Scott Galloway (@profgalloway) cohosts Pivot with Kara Swisher, publishes the No Mercy/No Malice newsletter, is a professor at NYU Stern School of Business, and is the author of The Algebra o...f Happiness: Notes on the Pursuit of Success, Love, and Meaning. What We Discuss with Scott Galloway: How American priorities have shifted from a society that creates millions of millionaires to one that idolizes individuals worth the GDP of Norway. Why the opportunities Scott and earlier generations enjoyed are no longer available to the majority of the population today. How Scott can predict if a young person will be successful by the time he or she is 30 (and what you can do to give yourself an edge if you're not on the path). Why striving for work/life balance and following your passion aren't ideal strategies if you aspire toward great wealth. The good news: why you don't have to have great wealth in order to live a rich and happy life. And much more... Full show notes and resources can be found here: https://jordanharbinger.com/204 Sign up for Six-Minute Networking -- our free networking and relationship development mini course -- at jordanharbinger.com/course! Disgraceland is a true crime podcast about musicians getting away with murder. If you love true crime and you love music, get ready to love Disgraceland here! Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Transcript
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Starting point is 00:00:02 Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. As always, I'm here with my producer, Jason DePhilippo. Today's guest, Scott Galloway is a professor at Stern Business School in New York. He's also a successful serial entrepreneur and the author of The Algebra of Happiness. So what? Well, his resume actually reads like a what not to do, according to his own book. This is a guy who didn't care at all about school and almost didn't even go, and then ended up talking his way into undergrad and business school and had a heck of a ride since then, of course. Today, Scott is sharing some very real wisdom gained through his experience, such as why you should forget about work-life balance early in your career if you want economic success, why the advice
Starting point is 00:00:42 to follow your passion is actually terrible, and, you know, I love that topic. We'll also discuss why talent is mere table stakes these days and what to cultivate instead. There's a lot of gold in this episode, and I really hope you enjoy it, and you might even get your bell rung by some of the truth in this episode as well. And one thing that Scott recommended, spoiler alert, is focusing on your relationships. That's what we're teaching you how to do in six-minute networking, which is our networking course, which is free at jordanharbinger.com slash course. All right, here's Scott Galloway.
Starting point is 00:01:17 First of all, your bio almost reads like a what not to do according to your own book. Because it was like, I'm not trying in school. I'm going to lie to get an interview and get ahead. And then I'll get divorced and change relationships because I want to try and upgrade my life. and then I read the algebra of happiness, and it's like, don't do all of these things that I did. Well, do as I say, not as I do. And the bottom line is you learn more from your failures,
Starting point is 00:01:45 and I've had a lot of them. Yeah, that makes sense. I think failure teaches us more generally. It's kind of a truism that we see from entrepreneurs that are on the show especially. The victories are great. They're the ones that maybe make you rich, but all the work is done in flopping and falling on your face.
Starting point is 00:02:02 I think that's right. For UCLA, there's a lot of things actually that you tried or that you did in the book that I feel like don't work now. And I want to get those out of the way because what I don't want people to do is hear your advice and go, well, this is a different world. It's not like that anymore. You know, you went to UCLA and it was the way you got in was a little unorthodox. You want to tell us how that happened? Because I fear that people will read this and decide that you don't know what you're talking about because it's a different world. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:02:29 So it is a different world. I was faced with two choices. I was either going to get, find a way into UCLA after being rejected, where I was going to be installing shelving. And I got a job installing shelving for $18 an hour, which seemed like a lot of money. And I was ready to do that. And I decided to write a letter and the truth has a nice ring to it. I said, I'm the son of a single mother who's a secretary. And if you don't let me in, I'm going to be installing shelving the rest of my life.
Starting point is 00:02:55 And they called me and what was probably the kind of the seminal moment of my life, they said, you're a native son of California and you're our son and we're going to let you in and you need to be enrolled in seven days. And I was neither a good student nor a good test taker. I was unremarkable in every way. I said it was remarkably unremarkable. And one of the things that scares me about our society today is that we've sort of fallen out of love with the unremarkable. There's never been a better time to be remarkable. Kids from inner cities who are remarkable can find the way to Harvard and Harvard will find them. But sort of what I'll call middle of the road, good, but not great people, but might have a great future ahead of them. It's harder and harder to get into great schools. And I feel that as an
Starting point is 00:03:37 academic, we academics have lost the script that we think of ourselves as a luxury good, not as public servants. And we brag about how many people we turn away. We're not expanding our seats as fast as the population. So, yeah, I worry that things have changed dramatically and the opportunities aren't nearly as great for an unremarkable kid such as myself now as they were then. This is terrifying for society in general because I read the algebra of happiness from cover to cover because it's a really great easy read. And of course we'll link to it in the show notes as we do with every book. Thank you. And we'll throw your sort of synopsis video embedded in the show notes as well.
Starting point is 00:04:12 But one thing that really stands out that you're certainly not trying to hide in the book is you kind of showed up to school, smoked a lot of pot as college students do, got a 2.27 GPA, went to business school and then started a bunch of companies. and it had a lot of great success, and now you're a professor at Stern business in New York. So this is a big shift from somebody that literally, you'd have been lucky to install shelving, right? Maybe you'd be the supervisor of the shelving company by now if you didn't get a back injury, right? Yeah, it's, look, it's human nature to credit your character and your talent with your success and then credit or blame the markets for your failures. And I have no such delusions. The generosity of California taxpayers and the vision of the Regents of University of,
Starting point is 00:04:58 to California are why I am sitting here speaking to you. And I'm not saying, oh, explore yourself. It'll all work out. You know, I was immature. I had, I smoked too much pot. I drank too much. I didn't have the discipline. I didn't have the rigor that kids need to get ahead in what is a much more competitive economy. So I'm very honest. I try to be honest about what I think the realities are that are facing our young people, you know, whether it's a problem or not, it is. I acknowledge it is a different world. But, you know, people have a tendency to rub Vaseline over the lens when they look back at their life. And, you know, the things and again, the things that frighten me is the primary reason, reasons I am successful are no longer here. And I'm a talented person. I'm not a modest person. I put myself on the top 1%, which puts me in a room, the population of Germany. So 75 million people is the top 1% of, you know, our planet. And I have. have a lifestyle, income opportunities, health care, opportunities to impact others in a positive way that is well ahead of the top 75 million people. And it's because of two reasons.
Starting point is 00:06:09 One, being born in America and two, an education system that love the unremarkables. And it's a huge issue now that we seem to have fallen out of love the unremarkables. And what we've decided in the kind of the 70s and 80s, and I would argue through most of the 20th century, America's collective goal was to make millions of of millionaires. There was a general feeling, even if you went to work for General Motors or Procter and Gamble, if you're a good citizen, you're played by the rules and you save some money, 401k, by the time you're retired, you could be a millionaire. And we created millions of houses that were millionaires. And it feels like through tax policy, through education, we're only the best and
Starting point is 00:06:45 brightest from around the world get in. And most people can't afford to go to these schools now. We've decided that collectively our new goal is to crown the first trillionaire, that we are obsessed and we have this kind of idolatry of billionaires and innovators. And we have decided that it's okay and even great to have people worth the GDP of Norway. But at the same time, household income and wages has not budged in 30 years. And I would say, I would argue we've kind of lost the script. And we need billionaires. But our tax policy is basically, in my opinion, one giant transfer of wealth from the poor and the middle class to the wealthy. And I think it's very dangerous. It seems like talent is table stakes now. It just gets you in the door. You phrase it really well in the book. It's like diamond medallion on Delta Airlines. You think you're special, but then you get to LaGuardia Airport and you realize there's just a whole lot of you. And that's a brilliant analogy because I think everybody who flies a lot and has some sort of like even lower level medallion status is like, but I'm silver. And it's like you're lucky to get a seat on this freaking plane. Yeah, here's some peanuts. Well done. So I go through a series of equations.
Starting point is 00:07:52 in the book around predicting success. The two primary inputs I need to tell if a kid's going to make a lot of money by the time he or she's 30 is only two things. One, their pedigree, where they went to college. And two, their zip coat. So the two primary drivers of income trajectory, and unfortunately, your income trajectory from 22 to 30 kind of sets the slope for the rest of your life, unfortunately. There are late bloomers. There are people who start out fast and then slow down. But for the most part, your trajectory like coming off an aircraft carrier and a jet is largely set by that first kind of thousand feet. And the two things that drive that trajectory are one, we live in a caste system, except our caste system is universities. And two, if you're in a city, a third of all economic
Starting point is 00:08:36 growth, despite the fact we have 450 metros in the U.S., is just crowded into five cities. So show me a kid who went to Dartmouth, who's managed to figure out a way to get to New York or Shanghai or San Francisco. And I'll show you a kid who's going to make 150 grand, the time they're 30 years old a year, if not more. Show me someone who has a junior college degree and is living in Little Rock, Arkansas, and I'll show you someone to be lucky if they're making 50 grand by the time of the 30. So the lesson is simple when you're young. Get credentialed, and I realize not everyone's cut out for college, so I don't care if it's
Starting point is 00:09:07 a class student license, an esthetician license, anything that you can put on your LinkedIn profile that separates you from the other seven and a half billion people and get to a city while you're young. because the majority of economic growth, two-thirds of the economic growth over the next 30 years, is going to take place in a handful of super cities globally. And just as when you're rallying with someone better than you on the tennis court, your game elevates. When you are in a big city, you are playing against Roger Federer across everything you do,
Starting point is 00:09:36 and your game will be better. And it gets harder as you get older. It gets harder to go back to school. You start collecting dogs and kids, and it gets harder to move to Manhattan or San Francisco. So if you want to be in the top 10%, much less the top 1% economically, and not everyone does, I want to be clear. I'm not saying that everyone is just howling in the money storm. But most of the people, young people I deal with, envision themselves in kind of the top economic class, or at least aspire to it, two basic rules. Get certified and get to a city.
Starting point is 00:10:07 I know, of course, most people want to be in the 1%. You know what? Actually, I take it back. I think now most people want to be in the 0.1%. They just think that's what the 1% is. 100%. People think you ask people, Jordan, your story, you ask people what their expectations are on income.
Starting point is 00:10:25 They don't realize how difficult it is to make that kind of money in our economy because we have so many well-publicized billionaires and everybody knows somebody who's making a ton of money, but it is hard to get there. I live in Silicon Valley. And so I'm running this game and we'll get to this a little bit later where it's really hard not to compare yourself, which as you mentioned is a key. It's a very easy way to make yourself miserable, but you'll be around people who go, hey, why don't you come to my friend Sekeel's house? And you're like, great, cool, we'll go over and play some poker. And you drive up Sandhill Road,
Starting point is 00:10:56 which is where all the venture capitalists are. And you go to somebody's house and he works for Andresen Horowitz, which is a big VC firm for those who are listening who might not be familiar. And you're just looking at like 270-degree views of all forest. And the house is 8,000. thousand square feet and he's got two kids and you're just thinking wow you know i'm i'm pushing 40 so i get i get what that looks like but if you're 22 and you go there you think so all i have to do is just work hard and this is what might be in store for me and you don't realize this is somebody who like you said got credentialed got to a city found out where the money is and this this is a real example the guy's name is in sequel it's something very similar but i think he's like a phd in
Starting point is 00:11:38 biotech invested really early in certain biotech firms got put on the VC train of Andresen Horowitz made some great investments and probably got paid a lot of dough because that's a six or eight million dollar house or whatever it was that I was in and people go they're the one percent one percent of and then they try to do this math in their head one percent of this is this and I can hit that number and it's like look that's not one percent one percent is the guy that you know that drives a Tesla and has two kids that's the one percent the point the point. 0.1% is the person that you, that looks wealthy to you when you're watching something like on television that's not 902.1. Well, you put some numbers around it. The top 1% means you're
Starting point is 00:12:20 making around $780,000 a year. And if you live in New York or San Francisco, you're paying an effective tax rate, if that's current income, of 45%. So on 400,000 of net income, if you have two kids, you can't afford to live in San Francisco or New York. So the top 1% can no longer afford really to live in Manhattan or in San Francisco. And the thing you didn't mention about your buddy Sekeel, he did everything right, super smart, super hardworking, super potentialed. Also just super fucking lucky. Yeah. And one of the things that you find in research around happiness is key to our species in terms of the evolution is a competitiveness gene, where we anchor off of the, the strongest caveman, the most talented, the most talented person in our clan, the most interesting person,
Starting point is 00:13:04 the most successful. And we say, okay, that's what we should be. That's the benchmark. And we all know somebody in our circle who is incredibly talented and has done really well. And then typically what happens is you realize in your kind of mid-20s or 30s that you're probably not going to be a senator or have a fragrance named after you. And it's really a bummer because you will always meet people more successful than you who have more money, who have more power, who have more kind of currency in the marketplace. So it's, and especially in this age, when every day you have Instagram basically telling you, yeah, this is what a normal life looks like. This is this is about jets and fragrances and partying St. Bart's.
Starting point is 00:13:47 And the reality is, okay, you're not seeing a real picture of what real life is like. And it creates tremendous ambition. There's some good things about it. But I think especially among young people, it can create, set a lot of people up for extreme disappointment. And I think it's important around the luck piece to realize that when you're really successful and you're killing it and most people have those moments in life, it's not entirely your fault. A lot of it is luck. And it's also important to recognize when you've been beamed in the face and really screwed up that it's also not entirely your fault. When they survey seniors and they say, what one piece of advice would you have for your younger self?
Starting point is 00:14:25 Universally, the thing that comes back number one or number two is that they'd wish they'd been less hard on themselves. They'd wish they'd been not only more forgiving of other people, but more forgiving of themselves, that they weren't, that they hadn't been as disappointed or hard on themselves when they didn't achieve the expectations they'd set up from themselves, that they weren't as hard, that shouldn't have been as hard on themselves when they came up a little bit short. So the key to capitalism is obviously competition. The key to evolutionary biology is this incredible competitiveness gene, but you have to modulate it and recognize that being in the 98th percent,
Starting point is 00:15:01 And maybe that means you can't afford to live in San Francisco or New York, but you're in the 98th goddamn percent. You know, think about, think about 98. Don't think about the two you aren't. And it's very hard to do in a society where everyone is sort of what I call howling in the money storm. Howling in the money story. Yeah. Well, that hits very close to home for me because I do anchor off the most successful people that I know. And I get disappointed when I don't match those people's achievements.
Starting point is 00:15:28 And that was great when I was in high school because it made me get back. grades because I had smart friends, but it's really tough when you meet a buddy and he founded Brain Tree and has $850 million or whatever, right? That's, you then are going dropping out of high school straight into the pros and wondering why you're not LeBron James while you're still junior varsity in a way, right? Like I know I'm mixing metaphors here, but I'm guilty of this. And it, It is sort of a formula for unhappiness. And your advice to forgive yourself so you can get on with the important business of life is not lost on me. It's just easier said than done, I think.
Starting point is 00:16:07 You're listening to the Jordan Harbinger show with our guest, Scott Galloway. We'll be right back. And thanks for listening and supporting the show. To learn more about our sponsors and get links to all the great discounts you just heard, visit Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. If you'd like some tips on how to subscribe to the show, just go to Jordan Harbinger.com slash subscribe. Subscribing to the show is absolutely free.
Starting point is 00:16:27 It just means that you get all the latest episodes in your podcast players they're released so you don't miss a single thing. Now back to our show with Scott Galloway. There's some advice here. The first is what is the definition of rich? And I think the definition of rich is passive income that is greater than your burn. And most of us until the age of 40 or 50 focus on the top line and that is our income. We want a bigger and bigger number. I have a close friend here who is a partner in investment bank.
Starting point is 00:16:57 running a large group of 200 investment bankers. And this individual makes somewhere between $5 and $7 million a year. After taxes on all that current income in Manhattan, city, state, and federal taxes, takes some of about $3.5 million. By the time he's done paying alimony and child support for his previous marriage and children, taking care of his current household, having a townhouse, a house in the Hamptons. of that $3.5 million, he spends about three and a half. He literally spends his entire paycheck because he has increased his standard of living as he's increased. And I know this specifically,
Starting point is 00:17:37 that he's literally having trouble sleeping because he's like, what happens if and when the structural reallocation of capital out of M&A or active investing to passive investing? What happens when the Grin Reaper shows up in my door? And this guy's in his early 40s, so he's still a young man, but he's old by investment banking standards. The flip side, my father, between his pension from the Royal Navy and Social Security from him and his wife, they get about $48,000 a year in passive income and they spend 40. My father is rich. He's getting more passive income than his burn.
Starting point is 00:18:10 And he is happy and secure and literally giddy that he doesn't have to work and he makes more money than he's spending. So I would say young people focus on their income. adults start to focus on their burn, and that is how do I chart a path that I can get to investments, whether it's rental income from housing, dividends on stock, forced savings, such that I have a path to get to a point where realistically I might have enough passive income that's greater than my burn. And that burn at some point might be moving to a place that's less expensive. It might be tempering your expectations around the lifestyle you lead. But there is a real peace and a real dignity to being.
Starting point is 00:18:51 rich. And rich can happen at $48,000 a year. Most people wanting to be in the 1% led me to another point that you made that I love, which is talent alone doesn't get you within spitting distance of the 1%, especially the 0.1%. And the chaser that takes talent over the top, as you put it, is hunger. And understanding where hunger comes from can be the difference between success and fulfillment. Can you get into that, then where does hunger come from in that case? I think it comes from different places. and it's difficult or I don't have the skill set or the domain expertise to identify specific sources.
Starting point is 00:19:26 I know where it came from from me. And people are often very complimentary impressed by the fact that I came from what I call an upper, lower, middle class household. I was raised by a simple mother. She was a secretary. Our household income peaked when I was in college at $46,000 a year. I think that was the most money she ever made. And people are so impressed by that that I've been able.
Starting point is 00:19:49 I'm one of the 11% that's gone from one of the lower two quintiles to the upper quintile. And that's great. I feel good about myself, people impressed. I am equally impressed by kids who are born into money and find a way to work hard, be responsible, get their ass out of bed at 7 in the morning and work their butt off and do what's required to really add value in this competitive, you know, full body contact economy. If I were born into money, and I mean this sincerely, if I were born into money, the only two things I know would be president in my life are a range rover and cocaine. I would not
Starting point is 00:20:24 be hungry. I would not be, in my opinion, I would likely not be a responsible citizen until I got probably older because I just wouldn't have the hunger. The hunger for me came from two places and they both involve women. The first is my mother got very sick. She was diagnosed with terminal breast cancer when I was in graduate school. And I remember going to the surgeon with her and thinking we weren't getting good care. We couldn't get a second opinion. I had trouble even getting my questions answered. And I remember thinking, I wish I had more money. I wish I had more contacts. We have neither. And I felt very emasculated and humiliated that I couldn't take care of my mother at a level I wanted to. And I decided there and then I connected health care with money. And I decided there and then I was going to be rich.
Starting point is 00:21:11 And the second is more base, and that is I noticed that having power and having money was a great way to expand your selection set of mates. And for me, it was about having the opportunity to feel stronger and quite frankly attract a broader set of potential mates. So to me, it was very motivating, both a terminal illness and my family and also just wanting, you know, wanting my more experiences to be wealthy. If I had started out with money, I just don't think I would have hauled my ass out of bed every morning the way I did and been thinking about work 24 by 7. And by the way, I don't, I'm not advocating that's the right path. It costs me a lot. My 20s and 30s, I barely remember anything but work. It cost me my first marriage. I was diagnosed. I had some health issues right out of college, although I'm not sure that was stress related or
Starting point is 00:22:08 related to work. But it comes at a cost. And one of the things I tell kids is that the myth of balance is a myth. That even if you know somebody who works at the, donates time at the ASPCA, has a food blog, makes a ton of money, has a good relationship with their parents, assume you are not that person and recognize that there is a tradeoff between aspirations around income and the balance in your life. And I decided early on I was going to make that trade off. The other kind of great analogy around money is think of money as not the story. If you just have a number in your mind, how much am I worth? You're always going to have people who are worth a lot more and numbers go really high. You never hit, it's like Han Solo said to Mark Hamill when he said, you're going to get more money
Starting point is 00:22:52 than you ever imagined. And Hans Solo said, I don't know, I can imagine a lot of money. Our imagination will always outpace the reality in terms of what kind of money we would like. And you're always going to be a little bit unsatisfied. Think of money as the ink in the pen for your story. It can help make the story burn brighter. It can write new chapters you might not be able to write without it. But it's not the story. It's not the story. And it's hard to, it's hard to get off the hamster wheel of money and economic success when you're on it and you should be on it for the first 10, 20 years of your career because we live in a capitalist society and economic security is not only important. I think it's your obligation as a head of household. But it's hard to have the perspective to know when to
Starting point is 00:23:33 step off and say, okay, I need to start investing in and developing other things that create an arc of happiness and satisfaction other than just that number. So the advice here is work it while you're young because the slope trajectory of your career is essentially fair or not set in the first five years or so, would you say post-graduation? What sort of time frame are we looking at? Yeah, this isn't what the world should be. This is what the world is. And by the way, it's not for everybody.
Starting point is 00:24:00 Some people are like, I'm not on the money. train. I'm going to move to a smaller town. I'm going to make a good living and I'm going to be happy. And there's nothing wrong with that. I'm basically saying this through the lens of the kids I work with, which is mostly second year MBAs, which is obviously a biased selection set who are all, when I ask them how much money they expect to be making in 10 years, just as you referenced Jordan, they don't expect to be in the 1%. They expect to be in the 0.1%. And you just have to have an honest conversation around the sacrifices and what you're really willing to sacrifice and then adjust your expectations.
Starting point is 00:24:40 Otherwise, you're setting yourself up for failure. And the reality is that it's very difficult to devote the kind of grit and commitment and time commitment to really make a ton of progress professionally when you have kids or sick parents. And that stuff all happens. And they're both the ability to take care of your parents, the ability to raise kids, is super important. But from 22 to 35, if you want to be in that top 10 or 1%, the bottom line is, I don't know anyone who didn't primarily focus, not even primarily, kind of focus 100% to 97% on their
Starting point is 00:25:20 career. And I'm not advocating that that's the right strategy. I'm just saying if your expectations economically are to enter into the Thunderdome and be one of the 1%, then boss, the myth of balance is a myth, and the other big myth is this notion that you should follow your passion. The speakers at NYU always in their conversations are always a billionaire, and they always end their conversation, their speech with follow your passion. And this is usually from a guy that made his billions of dollars in iron ore smelting. Oh, yeah. Let me attack that in a second, because that's a whole, rabbit hole that I want to go down, because I hate follow your passion. It's a pet peeve of mine that gets me kind of riled up. I know people are going to ask, what about from 45 to 65, though? If you
Starting point is 00:26:05 didn't start strong, what happens now? I mean, are you just screwed or what? I don't think you're screwed. I think realistically, it's a lot more difficult for you because you don't, it's more difficult for you to take the risks. It's more difficult. You're probably going to have more familiar obligations in terms of aging parents, in terms of kids. A lot of people are late bloomer, so by no means are you screwed? But again, the reality is in the parts of the economy that are growing the fastest, specifically tech and finance, what you have is in biotech, you have tremendous ageism. And that is that there's a general sense, if you're 45 and you walk into a conference room at big tech, you're either pretty senior
Starting point is 00:26:49 or worth tens of millions of dollars or the general assumption is you fucked up or just aren't that good. You know, there's always an ism. In 60s and 70s, 80s, I would argue that the thing holding back the economy wasn't racism. It was sexism. It was very hard for women to get ahead because they needed to raise children. And we were in a society that saw that as the burden of women. And so I think the thing that held our economy back was sexism. I would argue now that the most dangerous unlock, if you will, that we need to unlock and figure out is ageism.
Starting point is 00:27:22 And I think there's a general assumption that we have this idolatry of innovators and youth such that, anyone over the age of 40 is kind of immediately there's a bias against them. And I think it's starting to pop up in the most, show me the fastest growing parts of our economy. And I'll show you a gestalt where people assume there's a bias towards backing 25-year-olds. There's a bias towards finding that young, hungry person, as opposed to looking at someone and saying, wow, this person has experience. This person has balance. This person has a little bit more maturity. Those things seem to have been diminished as qualities. So no, you're not screwed, but realistically, if again, you're planning to get there, you know, it's the prime earning years, they always say it's
Starting point is 00:28:07 your 50s and 60s. That's the prime monetization years. The prime earning years in terms of creating currency and momentum are absolutely in your 20s and your 30s. As someone who worked in the tech industry for a very long time and did not get the golden and ring, as it were, the ageism is so true because as soon as I hit 40 and I would walk into a big tech company, zero interest in hiring you. If you're not 25 and you're willing to break things and move fast, then nobody cares about all of that experience you have, all of that domain experience. And I think you're right. With ageism is, it's a huge problem right now and it definitely needs to be addressed. Yeah. Hopefully, you know, there'll be legal or regulatory,
Starting point is 00:28:53 remedies, but I think a lot of it is opportunistic. I think there's a ton of opportunity with people in the 40s and 50s who are looking for a second act and bring a different skill set, but just as an important skill set. I mean, it's weird that we're apologizing for being old. I used to be, I don't know about you, but I used to be the youngest guy in the room. I used to be the most successful person for my age in the room. And then there was about a week I was the same age, and now I'm the oldest person in the room. And fortunately, because I have some success under my belt, I'm treated with respect. But if there's other people my age in the room that haven't sort of killed it or haven't sold a company or something, there's a general assumption that, okay, dude, what went wrong?
Starting point is 00:29:37 What went wrong? Well, nothing went wrong. So it is an issue. It's also an opportunity. I always tell tech companies that the untapped ROI in human capital is that person who's in their or 50s, who's had a good career. But the difference between good and great and crazy a lot of times is timing and luck. And maybe that person had to take a couple years off, decided to stay at home and raise kids, decided to take care of their parents, dealt with an issue or just bloom later. But I find increasingly, whereas 20 years ago, I found that finding hiring young women that they were the untapped resource, that everyone wanted kind of like older guys, older white guys. And then the opportunity was the underinvested asset of young women.
Starting point is 00:30:22 Now I'm finding in the workplace, the underinvested opportunity is people in their 50s. You're listening to The Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest, Scott Galloway. We'll be right back after this. Thanks for listening and supporting the show. Your support of our advertisers keeps us on the air. And to learn more and get links to all the great discounts you just heard, visit jordanharbinger.com slash deals. And don't forget the worksheet for today's episode. That link is in the show notes at Jordan Harbinger.com slash podcast.
Starting point is 00:30:51 And if you're listening to us on the Overcast player, please click that little star next to the episode. We really appreciate it. And now for the conclusion of our episode with Scott Galloway. I like the point that you make that if balance is a priority in your youth, you might just have to accept. Not definitely, but you might just have to accept that you may not make it to the upper rungs of the socioeconomic ladder. And that's a cold truth that a lot of people don't want to accept. They're like, no, I'm going to be making so much more later or my business is going to pop off because of all the sort of struggle porn and influencer money billionaire porn on Instagram that you might see where it's like, no, I started my own thing. And now I make seven figures surfing. It's just, it's a bad message. There's an unhealthy notion around meritocracy and the stuff that's thrown in our face. And that is this notion that if you work hard enough, anyone can make it. And first off, I 100% think you should.
Starting point is 00:31:51 should work hard. I also believe you have to take care of yourself from a health perspective. I think you do have to find some time to be physically fit, find some time to maintain a certain level of connection with the relationships. In this struggle porn industry that's emerged, it's like, go to work for free, work 100 hours a week, no fucking excuses. You are your own future. There are no excuses. Well, actually, there are excuses. Some people have to take care of a parent. Some people don't have a college degree and don't get to go to work for Jeff Bezos for free. So the notion that our meritocracy has created this notion that anyone can be successful, the dark side to that is that anyone who isn't successful, it's their fucking fault. And that's not true either. There are situations
Starting point is 00:32:38 where people just don't have the same opportunities and this notion that, you know, the majority of people don't have parents who can put them through fashion, right? The majority of people aren't in a position to go to an internship. The majority of people have other people in their lives, they have to take care of and they can't work 16 hours a day. So I think the struggle porn thing, I think there's a balance there. I think that's a little bit, a little bit dangerous. And this notion that, you know, okay, if you don't make it, it's your own fault. That's not true either. There's, you know, the difference between, I mean, I was thinking about the absolute or one of the absolutes for my success was that I had resilience and I lived in an economy. Everyone says America, the U.S. embraces failure.
Starting point is 00:33:22 That's bullshit. It doesn't embrace failure, but it tolerates it. And I've started nine businesses. And realistically, I'm sort of like three, four and two. I don't think any other society would put up with me and have let me start businesses two, three, four, much less nine. And the ability to get beaned in the face, stand up, dust off your pants, get up to the plate and swing harder until you finally connect is really the most wonderful thing. of the most wonderful things about the business environment in the U.S. But the notion that no matter what, if you work that hard, you'll figure it out and success is solely a function of how hard you work. It's definitely a requisite for being successful, but it doesn't guarantee jack shit. And all this stuff around never give up.
Starting point is 00:34:05 Oh, yeah, you should give up. If you work your ass off at something for three years and it's not working, move on, give up, do something else. We romanticize entrepreneurship in this notion. that in a meritocratic society, that if you put in the work hours, it's table stakes, but it's not a guarantee. The infant mortality rate on businesses is 80%. We also romanticize entrepreneurs.
Starting point is 00:34:28 And the reality is most entrepreneurs, and you were saying this at the beginning of the show, Jordan, we're entrepreneurs because we don't have the skill set to work in big companies. There's nothing wrong with working in a big company. They're great platforms. But most of us or most entrepreneurs just don't have the skills to be successful in a build company. anyways, a big company. I rambled on and got off script there. No, it's okay.
Starting point is 00:34:49 I mean, it's very true. I didn't, I used to be a Wall Street attorney. And one of the reasons I started learning things about networking and psychology, which were the foundation of this show, is because I was convinced that I was going to get fired because I wasn't as smart and organized and didn't get it quickly like everyone else. And then I had partners saying things like, hey, you need to work on your communication skills. You need to work on your management of expectations or, you know, people would just seem, the other people I worked with, they just got it. They seem to get it. They seem to
Starting point is 00:35:23 understand how to send a quick check in on an assignment and then hand it in and it looked good. And I'd be like, yeah, I'm done. I left it on the guy's chair and I'm leaving. And they're, you know, I just did everything wrong. So when I started my own business and figured things out in my own, it worked out really well because all my weird quirks kind of didn't matter and all my divergent thinking turned out to be an advantage. But all other things being equal, I would have been better off in terms of financially, for sure, at least in the short term. And most likely I would have had less stress. It would have been big stress, but it would have been consistent versus like the up and down roller coaster of entrepreneurship had I just stayed an attorney on Wall Street or elsewhere.
Starting point is 00:36:03 That's exactly right. And I've had a similar experience. My first job out of UCLA was a Morgan Stanley. And I caught up with a friend of mine who stayed at Morgan Stanley. And we both kind of ended up in the same place economically. We both ended up in a good place. But mine looked like, you know, just a shit show path of ups and downs and in crevices and peaks and the amount of stress. And whereas his was just a slow, steady climb. And people romanticize entrepreneurs. But the bottom line is, I don't have the skills this guy had.
Starting point is 00:36:36 I actually think he could have been an entrepreneur. Entrepreneur just means that you have a greater risk tolerance and your great at sales. Entrepreneurship is Latin for sales. Selling clients, selling people to join you, selling people to finance you. You're constantly selling. But this guy ended up at the same place with I agree with you a lot less stress, a lot less, I think, sleepless nights, probably not the highs. You know, there's a certain celebrity status with becoming a successful entrepreneur, and I think people assign more value to your skills. But what you were talking about at that firm, you know, a lot of it is it is not easy to survive at a big firm. You have to be secure. When I was at
Starting point is 00:37:12 Morgan Stanley and they'd go into a conference room, but I immediately think, oh, they're talking about me when they probably weren't. I couldn't handle working for people I didn't think were that smart. I couldn't handle the administrative bullshit. And the reality is big companies are great platforms. And I always tell the kids who come into my office, if you have an offer from Google or Amazon, take it. And this notion that entrepreneurship is always going to work out, it's a very difficult way to make a living. So yeah, the highs are high, the lows are lows, but people constantly overestimate entrepreneurship and romanticize it and underestimate how powerful it is to go to work for a platform. I think now, of course, there's a whole cottage industry of victimizing people who
Starting point is 00:37:54 believe that, too. There's a lot of entrepreneurs. Their sole business is teaching other people how to be entrepreneurs, and it's this sort of vague, teach you how to hustle, teach you out to generate income and none of it is an original idea which makes the whole space crowded and further sort of propagandizes the idea that you should do it. I would love to skewer the whole follow your passion thing because this I talked about with Mike Rowe from Dirty Jobs in the past. This is like the go-to button bumper sticker of commencement speeches and it's the number one piece of advice you'll get from some super successful personality on Instagram or if you catch them at an airport lounge because it's easy and like you said it's a sexy thing to say it's very much
Starting point is 00:38:41 it's very unsexy to find out how most people made their money yes I sell I sell fasteners what are those oh you know like bolts and brackets for cars and trains and planes those people are billionaires because everybody needs brackets or iron ore copper wiring that's that's the where the money is. 100%. There's some very well publicized examples, Jay-Z, Steve Jobs, Tom Cruise, people who followed their passions and became hugely successful. And my advice is assume you are not that person.
Starting point is 00:39:16 And that is the majority of people, your charge, your job as a young person is not to follow your passion. It's to find out what you're good at and then invest the time, the grit, and the energy to become great at it. And being great at something, the accoutrements that follow being great at something, status, respect your colleagues, money, access to better health care, the ability to take care of your parents and your kids, you will become passionate about whatever it is that lets you do those things. And the notion that you should follow your passion is dangerous, because what happens? You get to a job and it gets hard. And that's called work. It gets frustrating. It gets hard. It gets
Starting point is 00:39:57 hard. And you immediately assume, oh, it must not be my passion because I don't love this. And you move on. And the reality is it's work. You know, so follow your passions on weekends. Find out what you're great. I would have liked to have made my living as a professional athlete. You know, I thought, you know, I'm a decent athlete. I thought this is my passion. Guess what? I got to UCLA and I found out really fast, really fast, that I was a decent athlete in high school, a great athlete in junior high school, and I was barely an athlete. I rode crew at UCLA, which is where all the rejects that got cut from every other sport ended up. But that was a blessing in disguise, because my friends who were more talented than me who went to the Seoul Olympics or played AAA baseball, they ended up
Starting point is 00:40:44 starting their lives at 30 because most passion sectors are over-invested. If you want to open a nightclub, go to work for Vogue or play professional sports or music, just recognize. You better get a great deal of psychic income from those things because the monetary income relative to your effort will be dramatically lower than other asset classes. And I follow the same strategy when I invest. If it sounds cool, I don't invest in it. A friend of mine is opening a members-only club downtown focused on music and art. Sounds amazing. I won't get near it. Another friend of mine is starting a software as a service platform for healthcare maintenance workers. If I work there, I'd want to put a gun in my mouth. I will write that guy a check because the areas that sound awful are underinvested,
Starting point is 00:41:30 and that's where the return on investment is. Just as Florida housing in 2007, no one wanted to get near it, if you bought houses, you had a huge return. And just as now, everyone's going into, I don't know, what's the hottest thing that, you know, social something, a ride hailing or the share economy, that means the returns are going to get really bad, really fast. So your job, don't follow your passion, find out something you're good at, collect the rewards for it, and then you'll become passionate about it. People who tell you to follow your passion are already rich, right? It's a survivor bias of people that are already rolling in money. And even then, that might not even be their real advice. They just don't want to tell you, first, sleep on
Starting point is 00:42:14 the floor where your sewing machines are for 10 years and just hope that your brand, pops off and maybe get lucky by being friends with a couple of really big names and hip hop who get platinum records that then wear your stuff everywhere. Yeah, 100%. But even like, you know, look at Beyonce. I mean, what's been a common thing in her career? She works so hard. I mean, she's, this is an individual who's literally a perfectionist.
Starting point is 00:42:39 And my gosh, the amount of time and energy she puts into everything. And, you know, she's an inspiration. I just use that going back to the. the notion that some people are so talented. If you're talented and you find your passion just comes to you, no, it doesn't. It's a ton of grit and heartache. When you said psychic income, by the way, I'm worried some people might not have heard that before.
Starting point is 00:42:59 That essentially means, what, satisfaction, income that's not money? Some people just decide, there's a wonderful cohort of people that decide my return on investment is I want to do good things in the world. I'm a huge fan of a guy named Scott Harrison who started coming called Charity Water. Yeah, a good friend of mine. He's been on the show as well. So where Scott gets return on investment is he wants to bring water to the rest of the world. He's decided he was making a lot of money as a club promoter.
Starting point is 00:43:26 And he decided he wasn't getting any return on that. And the way he gets return is he wants to change the world and make, you know, make the world a better place from millions of people. And that's where he gets his income, his return. He's never going to be a millionaire. He's decided that's not my goal. So what is what is your return? And if you decide, you know what, I'm just, I'm cursed to be in fact, a better example, doctor. Being a doctor on a risk-adjusted basis right now is a shitty job.
Starting point is 00:43:55 The amount of education you need, the amount of investment you need to make, the amount of student loans, the amount of time, the amount of training, such that you can go to work for an HMO and make a good living, but maybe not a great living. It's not a great career. But some people are just born to be doctors. They're the people taking your heartbeat when they're nine years old. They just have to be doctors. Some people have to be in fashion. They have to be in retail. But if you're selecting a career and you're drawn to the passion fields, just make sure you get tremendous psychic income or reward because the financial return relative to other industries based on your grit and your effort will not be the financial return you'll find in less sexy industries. There is an inverse correlation between return on human capital and the sex appeal of that industry. You have a test to see if people are going to be a good entrepreneur or are just falling prey to the fact that we romanticize this BS all over the place. I meant to bring it up earlier.
Starting point is 00:44:55 Do you happen to have that kind of test at your fingertips? I want to throw that in the worksheet for this episode. Well, just a couple things. One, are you comfortable with exceptional risk tolerance? Would you be willing to borrow money from your in-laws and then call them and say you lost it all? Because you can be great at what you do. you can be a good person, you can have a great idea, and there's still probably a six and seven chance
Starting point is 00:45:18 that all the money you take from people is going to go to zero. The infant mortality rate on businesses. So just imagine that moment. You have to be willing to call people you know and trust you and ask them for money. It's very hard to finance a company without or start a company without financing. Most entrepreneurs cannot borrow money from institutional, cannot raise money institutionally,
Starting point is 00:45:38 at least not in the beginning. So they have to go to friends and family. Are you comfortable making that call? Could you handle that? because if you can and it happens, you don't want it to devastate you. So are you prepared to do that because that's a real possibility? And also, you've got to warn the investors, they could lose it all. Despite how wonderful a nephew you are, you could lose all their money.
Starting point is 00:45:57 Despite how much they believe in you, you could lose it all. Everyone has to be kind of eyes wide open going to this. The other thing is, are you comfortable signing the front of checks, not the backup checks? 99% of America isn't willing to go to work. When I started L2, I worked my ass off. I didn't have a lot of time with my two kids under the age of three at the time. And every first of every month, I'd have to go home and say to my wife, wow, worked my ass off. And I need us to put $100,000 into the business this month.
Starting point is 00:46:33 And that is a weird feeling. Most people will never endure or want to experience that. feeling in that is I'm going to work my ass off, create tons of insecurity, don't know if this is working. And my reward for that is on the first of every month, I get to put in more money. Are you comfortable doing that? Are you comfortable selling like crazy? Are you comfortable calling people that don't want to hear from you, right? Them telling you to fuck off and then you wait a week and call them back. You have to have incredible risk tolerance, an ability and willingness to lose your own and other people's money, the ability to sign the front of checks, not the back of them. And also, you have to
Starting point is 00:47:12 be comfortable selling. Most people will never, you know, just aren't willing to call people who don't want to hear from them and sell. And without those attributes, you know, you're not going to be an entrepreneur. That's not to say you shouldn't start a small company. Agent, you know, greatness is in the agency of others. You need talented people to join your firm. I always say to people who kind of don't really realistically pass those hurdles, go to work for a small company, but you're probably not an entrepreneur yourself. But this notion that it's a function of talent, you know, that entrepreneurship is for the most talented?
Starting point is 00:47:47 No, it's not. It's for the most risk-aggressive people who are willing to do very uncomfortable things. I think that's a key point because a lot of people right now go into the idea of self-employed. They're really, they listen to us say, we don't have the skills to work in a regular business. And they go, oh, my gosh, that's me. I don't want a job, so I'm going to do the entrepreneurship thing. And that's not, I wanted to put a finer point on that because that's not what we're saying. The idea that you don't work well in an office isn't the only sort of requirement for starting your own business.
Starting point is 00:48:16 It might work out for you or it might just be that you're a crappy employee and you don't deserve or need to be running your own business in any way also and that you need to figure it out. Yeah, being bad at one thing doesn't guarantee you're going to be a good entrepreneur. You had an attendance policy that went viral, and I know that doesn't make any sense, so I'm just going to repeat that. Your class attendance policy went viral, and it led to a really good point, which is getting the easy stuff right. And I see this a lot in my own inbox and when I mentor younger folks or even not so much younger folks, tell us what this is, because I loved this point.
Starting point is 00:48:51 And I thought to myself, there's a lesson I needed in my 20s slash early 30s, and that I see a lot of other people falling behind on as well. So what you're referencing is a kid in the first night of classes showed up to my class an hour late. And he walked in, he sat down and I asked him to get a stuff and I kicked him out of class. And I said, nobody is allowed in late, show up on time. And he wrote a letter saying how disappointed he was and how rude it was. And I responded to him. And I made the memo.
Starting point is 00:49:21 I made my sponsor to him. I anonymized it, but I made it our late policy. I put in a syllabus. It went viral. and within, you know, like three days the dean was getting an email about 70% approving, 30% very angry every two minutes from somebody. And it just, you know, got several million views on deadspin, et cetera. And this is definitely a do-what-I-say-not-as-I-do.
Starting point is 00:49:43 And this is advice to my younger self. And that is get the easy stuff right. Having respect for institutions, working hard, trying to maintain relationships while working 50, 60 hours a week, finding what you're good at, getting executive. level sponsorship at work, figuring out a way to not only have a decent life, but to save some money, which will grow. These things are really hard. You want to get the easy stuff right. And I have consistently struggled with this my whole career. Show up on time. When you're 10 minutes late, people immediately just don't want to like you. You know, put on a tie. Show some respect for the
Starting point is 00:50:21 environment. Respect the institution. Follow up. Be courteous. Be nice. You know, Basic manners, basic professionalism, you know, if you're not to a meeting 10 minutes early, then you're late. And by the way, this stuff has held me back my entire career. I always assume that I'm going to get to Midtown and it's going to work perfectly. And I end up being 10 minutes late and people who are more successful to me, I've been sitting in a conference room for 10 minutes and it just sets the wrong tone for the meeting. And I've spent a ton of time and a ton of other people spend a ton of time to deliver great data. And it goes fine, but it would have gone better if I'd just gotten the easy stuff right. So there are some basics, right? Timeliness, professionalism,
Starting point is 00:51:07 following up, basic civility, basic manners, a level of humility, you know, thanking people, getting back to them when they send you emails. I constantly have emails in my box and like, okay, I need to write a thought for response. And then three weeks later, I realize I haven't responded to this person. And that's just bad form. And it has, it has really cost me professionally. And so I say to the kids, look, look, getting the easy stuff right, you know, check the easy boxes first. I like that idea. I think that it's underrated and people are often, there's this sort of cult of irreverence almost, like everyone's too busy to spend time being polite or it, well, I'm self-employed, so I don't have to dress for the public.
Starting point is 00:51:54 art or something along those lines or even just the sort of Silicon Valley or entrepreneurs in general rock star kind of attitude, the people that are really successful have done so on the back of the strong relationships that they've built with other people. And you recommend strongly investing in your relationships. And I've got a whole free course called six minute networking. It's all of these things I wish I knew 20 years ago about reaching out to people, staying in touch with them, maintaining relationships. It takes like five or six minutes a day, and people don't freaking listen because they don't need to worry about networking yet, or I don't need networking in my job, or I have all the
Starting point is 00:52:33 friends that I need, or something along those lines until, of course, they get laid off, in which case it's immediate panic mode. What do I do? I email Jordan 68 times to figure out how I'm going to pay the rent this month. And it's really a point that I see successful people have all in common, is there. they're not doing it on an island and that all these achievements that they have are a result, almost direct result of the relationships that they've invested in over time. Yeah, there's, look, engagement were a cooperative species and immediately, you know,
Starting point is 00:53:09 I'm on the board of a media company and the CEO showed up there with his entire team. I'm like, I'll invest behind this guy because he's clearly made a ton of investments and appreciated his team and not only done well, but they're very loyal to this individual. And, you know, the singular, if you ask people with a singular relationship is in their life, the most definitive relationship, they usually say their spouse, but sometimes that doesn't work out. But a consistent number two across all situations and often number one is your mom. And the reason why is your mom made these ridiculous little investments in you constantly, and they add up. And Einstein supposedly is credited with saying that the most powerful force in the universe is compounding. interest. And the notion that you can put a thousand bucks away when you're 22, and it's 180 by the time
Starting point is 00:53:56 you're 65, and it's only 45 if you start at 45, it's the same with relationships. And I'm not suggesting that, you know, I don't want to, I'm being a little bit hypocritical because I'm saying work your ass off and focus off in your 20s and 30s. But small investments, a regular call to your stepmom, you know, trying to make sure every Sunday you speak to your parents, text messages, funny text messages to your friends, congratulations notes to people when they achieve something. Calls to. of friends when something bad happens, expressing gratitude or admiration for people, which is really difficult, especially for men, I think, in their 20s and 30s. I was thought that expressing, you know, that I was impressed with somebody somehow diminished how impressive I was. It was like it
Starting point is 00:54:37 was a currency. I didn't want to, I didn't want to give away. But yeah, 100% the, you know, greatness is achieved in the agency of others. And if you aren't willing to engage and start instilling loyalty, and by the way, what is loyalty? Loyalty. is solely a function of appreciation. If you appreciate people, if you pay them well, or if you try and grow them or you're trying to show empathy and really treat them well, they become loyal to you because like all of us, we're focused on, you know, we're focused on our own well-being and we want to be around people who are going to take, are going to take care of us. I think people are often put off by this. They have the same, they have the same thought, right?
Starting point is 00:55:15 If I tell other people that their book was amazing or that they impressed me in some way, it diminishes my standing in some way. And people are often talking about this alpha male BS kind of situation. It's not just guys, but I think it's mostly or especially men. And interestingly, monkeys and apes had better mating success if they had stronger relationships and were more well-liked versus just being bigger or stronger. And that helps redefine masculinity a little bit because it means now, look, masculinity means relevance, good citizenship, being a loving father, having
Starting point is 00:55:48 friends that can rely on you, not the guy who throws his weight around and drives a Maserati. 100%. And that's in the book. I talk a lot a bit about how I think it's, we're in an environment right now where the gender you're supposed to embrace is gender neutrality. That's the kind of most aspirational gender that we promote. And I would argue that embracing your gender regardless of where you're on the spectrum is really important. And I think that masculinity has, you know, there's a lot of, there's an important dialogue taking place right now around toxic masculinity and there's been way too much of it for way too long. But I do think there's, you know, some of the things you mentioned are also key components of masculinity. When I think of my aspirations
Starting point is 00:56:32 around kind of expressing my manhood when I was younger, it was mostly, I want to be ripped. I didn't go to the gym to be healthy. I went to the gym to be, you know, big and ripped. I wanted to just be fucking awesome. I wanted to be rich and super cool. and be able to party with the best of them. And I wanted to sleep with as many strange women as possible. That's how I identified my masculinity in my 20s. And then as I got older, masculinity took on kind of a different form, and that as being a loving, supportive head of household,
Starting point is 00:57:04 makes me feel strong like bull, being a good citizen, being a good neighbor, voting, I find for some reason gives me tremendous pleasure now. And what I say to, I have this small cottage industry of advising the sons, of some of my friends, you know, get to where I was as soon as possible. Don't be a boy, be a man. Masculinity is a wonderful thing, but it changes shape as you get older. And you're going to find that that masculinity that people discover in their 30s, 40s and 50s is much more rewarding and is much more productive. But it's something that I think is very rewarding. And I would argue we're all still swinging
Starting point is 00:57:45 on vines, but the vines change. Scott, this has been great. Is there anything that I haven't asked you that you want to make sure you deliver? Well, people often ask in the book about the book, is there a, you know, what is the key to happiness? And the answer is there is no silver bullet, but there is a best practice. And it comes from the Harvard grant study, which is the largest study on longitudinal happiness ever undertaken.
Starting point is 00:58:09 And they looked at 400 men, age 19, and tracked them from 1929 until they died. Most of them died about 75 years later. I think the last one died when he was 94, maybe 104. Anyways, the studies survived for principal scientists. They kept having to swap out the principal scientists because they kept dying. And they measured everything from their food intake, the job they had, their relationships, where they lived, their zip code type of job, and then queried them frequently on their levels of satisfaction and happiness and then trying to correlate what were the drivers of
Starting point is 00:58:44 happiness and unhappiness. And what they found was that simply put, that the strength and depth of your relationships were really the key to happiness. At work, do you feel respected and do you feel admired? And do you respect and admire other people? With your friends, do you feel a sense of camaraderie and joy? And just as importantly, do you know they feel a sense of joy and camaraderie from you? And then with your family, do you feel a sense of love and support? And again, just as importantly, do you know that they feel a sense of love and support from you? And it has, this academic study has the most wonderful opening line of any academic study in history. And they summarize a 400-page report in the first sentence. They say happiness is love, full stop. So the depth and number of
Starting point is 00:59:32 relationships across work, family and friends is really the best practice around happiness. Scott, thank you so much. Really informative. I loved the book. We'll link to it in the show notes. and I really appreciate your time today. Thanks for your time, Jordan. Congratulations on your success. Great big thank you to Scott Galloway. The book title is The Algebra of Happiness. Jason, this guy was just dropping golden nuggets the whole time.
Starting point is 00:59:58 I love this one. My jaw was on the floor. I'm like, yes, yes, yes, take a note, take a note. Yes, yes. I want to give you a hug. Yes, yes. Come on, man, some more, some more, some more. And he just kept delivering the whole time.
Starting point is 01:00:08 I'm like texting you on Slack saying, okay, gold, gold, gold. Yeah. Yeah. What I love is he's not afraid to be like, by the way, this thing you saw on Instagram is BS or like you're not going to be able to not bust your ass during your 20s and 30s if you want to be successful later. Like that's just how this works for 99% of people. I wish he was there for me in my 20s.
Starting point is 01:00:30 I really do because I went the complete opposite. I'd listen to all the BS and now it's just like, okay, I got to slog back up that hill. If I'd have listened to him, I'd be in such a better place. So, oh, so good stuff. Well, it also gets rid of a lot of the foam because a lot of folks are like, Oh, I didn't take vacations. I'll look at all my friends doing this stuff. It's like, well, you're building a skill set in business,
Starting point is 01:00:51 and you don't see those rewards till later, and it was nice to get that confirmed. And he's just a really good case study with all of this. If you want to know how we managed to book all these great people and manage our relationships using systems and tiny habits, check out six-minute networking. It's a free course. It's at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course.
Starting point is 01:01:10 Don't say you'll do it later. Don't kick that can down the road. You got to dig the well before you get thirsty. once you need relationships, you are too late. The drills take a few minutes a day. I wish I knew it 20 years ago. It is not fluff. It is crucial, as you just heard today.
Starting point is 01:01:23 You can find all that at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. Speaking to building relationships, tell me your number one takeaway here from Scott Galloway. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on both Twitter and Instagram. This show is produced in association with Podcast 1, and this episode was co-produced by Jason Deferred Retirement DeFilippo and Jen Harbinger. Show notes and worksheets by Robert Fogany.
Starting point is 01:01:43 I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger. Remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for this show is that you share it with friends when you find something useful, which is definitely in this episode. So share the show with those you love, share the show with those you don't. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you listen, and we'll see you next time. This episode is sponsored in part by Something You Should Know podcast.
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