The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 492: Scott Galloway - Finding What You're Good At, Handling Criticism, & What It Means To Be A Man

Episode Date: September 25, 2022

Text Hawk to 66866 to become part of Mindful Monday. Receive a carefully curated email from me each Monday morning to help you start your week off right...  Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com Twitter/IG: @RyanHawk12    https://twitter.com/RyanHawk12 Scott Galloway is a professor at New York University's Stern School of Business, where he teaches brand strategy and digital marketing to second-year MBA students. A serial entrepreneur, he has founded nine firms, including L2, Red Envelope, Prophet, and Section4. In 2012, he was named one of the "World's 50 Best Business School Professors" by Poets & Quants. He's the author of multiple best-selling books including The Algebra of Happiness, The Four, and Adrift. Notes: Leaders who sustain excellence: Demonstrate excellence in what they do. "People want to follow people who are excellent at their job." They hold people accountable "Excellent leaders are generally kind to others and establish goodwill with many people." "Your job is to find something you're good at, and after ten thousand hours of practice, get great at it. The emotional and economic rewards that accompany being great at something will make you passionate about whatever "it" is." "I tell my students that nothing wonderful, I'm talking really fantastic, will happen without taking a risk and subjecting yourself to rejection. Serendipity is a function of courage." "If you don't get criticism it means you aren't saying anything." What does it mean to be a man? "Being a responsible head of household that provides for your family and is a real partner with someone and raising kids and checking that instinctive box — being a good father, being a good husband … raising responsible, civic-minded kids. It's also realizing that if your partner is better at being the head of household and being the provider you get out of the way and support them to do it." "The most dangerous person in the world is a broke and alone male, and we are producing too many of them." Greatness is in the agency of others… When I asked Scott about how he's built his career, his first thought was about the others who he's surrounded himself with. Greatness is in the agency of others. Your ability to attract and retain talented people will be the difference between a good career and a great one… We should spread kindness. Have security in yourself and give people compliments they deserve. "The most interesting 5 minutes I've had in a long time" - Anderson Cooper describing Scott Galloway "This guy is a walking applause break" - Bill Maher describing Scott Galloway Scott has sat on the boards of Gateway Computer, Urban Outfitters, Eddie Bauer, The New York Times Company, University of California Berkeley, Panera Bread, and Ledger, a crypto wallet. He hosted the CNN+ host of a business and technology show, No Mercy No Malice.

Jim Collins told me on episode number 216 that the single greatest determining factor in my long-term success or failure would be my who, who I chose to surround myself with. And that conversation has had a huge impact on how I've designed my business. And one of the most important elements or services that I provide is my learning leader circle. and I open up applications one time per year, and that time is now at learning leader circle.com. Now, this is the most inefficient element of my business, because I personally read every application, and I personally choose who will go on to the next round, and then who will ultimately be one of the 12 people to be in my next Learning Leader Circle. And I only do it one time per year, and that time is now. If you are intentional about surrounding yourself with others who will push you, challenge you, make you think differently, if you're willing to self-reflect and do some work, this could be for you.

And you can apply at learningleaders circle.com. We meet once per month on Zoom and then we meet one time per year in person for our leadership retreat for members of my learning leader circle. So if you'd like to apply, go to learning leader circle.com. Welcome to The Learning Leaders Show, presented by Insight Global. I am your host, Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Text, Hawk to 666-866 to become part of Mindful Monday. You, along with tens of thousands of other learning leaders from all over the world,

will receive a carefully curated email from me each Monday morning to help you start your week off. Right. You'll also receive details about how my book. the pursuit of excellence will help you become a more effective leader. Text, Hawk to 66866. Now, on a night's featured leader. Scott Galloway is a professor at NYU Stern School of Business, a serial entrepreneur.

He has founded nine firms, including L2, Red Envelope, Profit, and Section 4. In 2012, he was named one of the world's 50 best business school professors. He's the author of multiple bestselling books, including the algebra of happiness, the four, and a drift during our conversation we discuss. Why, quote, follow your passion is bad advice. And then who is the most dangerous person in the world and what we can do about it? And then how to become a better storyteller. We go deep there. and then what it means to be a great mom or dad and much more.

While Scott is controversial to some and his language is colorful, I appreciate the fact that Scott is willing to admit when he's wrong, and he surrounds himself with people who don't always agree with him so that he can learn and get better. And those are the types of people that I like to have conversations with. So I hope you enjoy. it's Scott Galloway. Scott, great to have you back on The Learning Leaders Show.

Welcome, man. Ryan, great to be back. So to get started, you've spent the bulk of your career surrounded by leaders who have sustained excellence over an extended period of time, not the one-hit wonders or had a little bit, but sustained excellence. What have you found to be some of the common themes,

behaviors, virtues, mindsets of those leaders who have sustained excellence. That's an interesting question. Because of, at the age of 26 in business school, I started a consulting firm that largely was hired by CMOs and CEOs. So these are individuals who had, you know, were kind of rounding third in terms of their career and had a lot of influence.

The kind of factors I would say are a few things. One, it sounds, it sounds passe, but they demonstrate excellence. I don't care for the CEO of Goldman Sachs or, you know, someone running with the Red Cross. There's a function at that organization they can do as well or better than anyone else. People want to follow excellence. And we don't talk about this a lot. They hold people accountable. They regularly fire people. They regularly demand more from people. They regularly say, you are not doing your job or you are not living up to your potential, your expectations we have for you. And third, and this is counter to the cartoon, I think, that has made of very successful

people. They're generally kind people who establish a lot of goodwill with a lot of people along the way. Distinct of the cartoon of Monty Burns owning the nuclear power plant and the well-publicized stories of people who are assholes getting to the top, to get to the top in an organization, you not only have to have a lot of allies, but you have to have a dearth of enemies. And people want good people to win. So I have generally found, and people don't like to say this

because there's an assumption that there's an inverse correlation between wealth and character, but I have generally found that very successful people are high character, very strong citizens that are good people. Who's the first person you think of

when you think of the word excellence? Gosh, that's a good one. I've worked with a lot of outstanding leaders. I mean, weird ones. You know, Howard Lester at William Sonoma was an outstanding merchant. You know, Bob Haas at Levi-Strauss and Company was very concerned about the community. I just, there's just a ton of people I've worked with who were just sort of an inspiration to be around and watch. them. Hamid Mogadam, a guy who originally came here from around who now runs prologis,

was just so kind of insightful and smart all the time. We could just kind of sum up the situation. My business partner, Catherine Dillon, is like, there's two types of leaders. There's the inspiring leader. I like, there's the inspiring leader or there's the player coach. Inspiring leader can get in front of all hands, set a direction or star, and everyone thinks, gosh, this guy or gal is so inspiring. I'm going to follow this person. I think that type of leadership is superseded or trumped by what I'll call the player coach leader. And my partner who's run all of my companies or who was my partner at L2 and now is running property media, she's a player of coach.

She'll pull up her chair next to someone and say, okay, this is how you edit a video. And this is how this is what's good and what's wrong about this. She just trains people and establishes tremendous loyalty by doing the work with them. And I find those leaders are more sustainable. People who partner with people and say, I'm going to make you much better at what you do because I'm so good at it. And I'm going to sit next to you in the chair next to you,

metaphorically or physically, and teach you how to do something. So it sounds like you've done a good job of partnering with people who can run the business. The reason I bring this up is because your ability to produce extremely great content consistently is, I mean, it's incredible. I've listened to, I told you last time we talked, I listened to every Profi episode. I still have, even since then, we talked two years ago. But you publish a book

now, I think the cadence you're looking for is every 18 months. You write a weekly blog post. You publish three to four podcasts a week if you clue the one you do with Kara, and now that Prop G is expanding. You charge six figures per keynote, probably high six figures from what I'm hearing. You're on boards. You consult with leaders. That's a lot of stuff, man, and including, you know, being a husband and a dad, to me it's kind of aspirational, it's inspiring. And so I guess the natural question is, how do you do it? So first off, you're being generous.

And thank you. Those are kind words. And, you know, less than young people, the mistake I made is that people that have achieved some level of success don't need to hear a compliment or do you're giving up something when you give someone a compliment. I had this weird fucked up vision of masculinity

where somehow it made me less of a man to express. admiration for other people and you don't have that problem and it's smart because no matter what where you get in life it just feels really good to have talented thoughtful people say nice things about you anyways I learned early on my only real talent is the ability to attract and retain talented people and I'm not one of these humble brag guys and you know people are more talented me I'm a very talented guy I work very hard but when people see my content sometimes they make the mistake of thinking it's me with a handheld camera and I'm doing the charts and sketching this shit out and they're like,

how can you do all this? I'm like, well, I don't do all this. I do a fraction of it. I try to pay people really well. I try to take a vested interest in their success. I focus on compensation because I think people generally speaking go to work to learn something and increase their human capital, but mostly to try and create economic security for them and their families. And I've always try to find talented people and just say to them, look, come join me. I'm very good at what I do. I have a history of creating economic security for myself and other people. I'm going to do better than you. I'm going to own more of this company, but you're going to do really well. And I've worked with the same people, many of the same people for, you know, my editor-in-chief, I hired out of Yale

29 years ago. And he's just kind of occasionally pontoons in and out of my life. So agency or greatness is in the agency of others, full stop. If you want to be an entrepreneur, people say, well, what do I do? How do I start? I'm like, the first thing you got to do is find someone great who rounds out your skill set because it is a creative. There is a network effect to people. And I believe this in terms of relationships at the most basic level, producing kids, producing a business, producing any organism. You cannot do it at a lot. You cannot do it alone. Nothing really wonderful ever gets accomplished alone. Those Japanese soldiers who were left behind in the Philippine islands and retreated into the hills and told just, you know, hold the island.

And they had to, they had to send their commissioning officers 20 or 30 years later to convince him to get off the fucking mountain. They did a lot of studies on these guys. They learned nothing. They weren't more self-actualized. They weren't in better shape. They didn't have any deep thoughts about war, they accomplish nothing except occasionally coming down into a small hapless village and terrorizing it. You have to have, at a very basic level, and this is one of the things I worry about with young men, you've got to have connections. And the people who are successful aggregate talented people around them. And loyalty is a function of appreciation. Do you pay your people well? Do you take a vested interest in their success? Do you celebrate their success publicly? Do you

occasionally get out of the way and let them do a press release and get interviewed on TV. You know, you're not the only one with an ego in the company. So my achievement, you know, and I haven't started a billion-dollar companies. I sold one company for 160 million. I sold another one for 38 when I was very young. So I've had good companies, but I've never had like a big, big win. But the things they've all had in common is really talented people. And we become emotionally and, you know, financially invested in each other's success. You mentioned your, what your fear when it comes to men. I want to talk a little bit about masculinity.

It's almost like you say that word and people cringe. And you've written that the most dangerous person in the world is a young man who's broken, alone. Can you share more about that as well as what it means to be a man? So there's just a ton of, the most unstable violent societies in the world, all have one thing in common. They have a disproportionate number of men who aren't attaching to work, aren't attaching to school, aren't attaching to a mate. And usually the societies have Porsche polygamy where the top desile of men in terms of wealth have multiple wives. And as a result, young men don't have any

mating opportunities, don't have any economic opportunities. And men are much more risk aggressive than women. So when they find they have no partner, no guardrails, no money, they become exceptionally risk-aggressive, even if it means revolution or violence. And we are producing way too many of them in the United States. The attack on Salman Rushdie, in my view, wasn't a story of the fatwa. It was a story of a young man living in his mother's basement who had no prospects. And when young men are graduating from college at half the rate as women, for every two women who graduate from college in the next five years, just only going to be one man, when seven of ten high school valedictorians are girls, when a third of men under the age of 30,

haven't had sex in the last year and people hear the word sex and their brain goes different places, but that is a key step to the elemental foundation of a society and happiness in my view, and that is a relationship with a partner. We're producing a generation of economically and emotionally unviable men. And the knock on effect there is that women made socioeconomically horizontally and up, men horizontally and down. The bottom line is a woman who has a college degree, which we're producing a lot of, they aren't interested in establishing relationship. with men who don't have college degrees or men who aren't economically and emotionally viable. And then you layer in the pandemic where everyone has not been socialized and you layer

in how many single parent households we have. I grew up in a single parent household. Mother was the light of my life. But the reality is girls in single parent households have similar outcomes to girls in dual parent households. Boys fall off the tracks without a male role model physically a parent in a young boys' life, they become immediately two or three times as likely to be incarcerated, much more likely to not graduate from high school. So I think there's what I'll call a crisis not only among young men, but a crisis among men my age who aren't stepping up and doing what I think is the ultimate expression of masculinity, and that is getting involved in the health and well-being of a

child that isn't yours. And when I think about masculinity, a couple things. One, I don't think it's the domain of people-born men. I think some women demonstrate from, I think Margaret, Thatcher was masculine. I think masculinity is wonderful. It's a societal-made construct as is feminism, and it's not necessarily the domain of people with outdoor plumbing, for lack of a better term. But for me, masculinity is the ability to garner strength and resources such that you can protect others. Real men plant trees, the shade of which they will never sit under. For me, that's what it is to be a man. I think, unfortunately, over the last decade or two decades in very popular figures in media and in politics have conflated or led to this dangerous conflation of masculinity and toxicity.

Men and masculinity play an incredibly important role. It's a wonderful thing. It doesn't mean making people unsafe. It doesn't mean mocking the disabled. It doesn't mean being prone to misogynistic content. It doesn't mean leveraging power at work to get put people in uncomfortable situations. So I think we need some help redefining masculinity and teaching young men that being a man is super important.

You just have to identify early what does it mean to be a man? What's it like when you get criticized publicly for saying stuff like that? Well, it hurts. You'd like to think that, I mean, you put up a face and you say, well, you know, you got to let that stuff roll off of you and having a certain amount of influence, you know, intellectually, that if you don't get criticism, it means you're not saying anything.

And also, sometimes, Ryan, I fuck up. Sometimes I get it wrong and people come after me and I try to learn and evolve. I use the M word. I mean, we're all adults here. On my podcast, I refer to a product as the tallest midget. And I got this really lovely email from- You just called care of that, like last week, I think.

Yeah, that's exactly right. And I got this really lovely email from this couple in London saying their kids suffered from my, I don't want to I don't want to totally pervert the word, but basically dwarfism. And they said, that makes our kid feel bad, it makes us

feel bad. And I thought that is the last way. That is the last fucking thing I want to do. It's make a little girl and parents feel bad. And also, it's not a big give. It's not a big give to say, I don't need to use that word. I can find other metaphors. So

I think the ability to take thoughtful criticism, I worry that masculinity or leadership has been incorrectly taught to young people to always double down, that if someone comes after you saying, that's my right, you're being too sensitive, Karen, and start using the M word over and over. No, that's not. That's not what it means to be a man or a leader. It means learning and evolving. And you have to understand the difference between being right and effective. You want to evolve. If people push back on you and you think you're right, occasionally get back in their face. But I used to get back in people's faces much more. I try to be more gracious.

I try not to argue with strangers. But yeah, when people come after you, it just takes a toll. There's no getting around it. They say very mean things. Sometimes there's a kernel of truth in what they say, and that's upsetting. But I just don't think there's any getting around it. What I try and tell myself is if you're blessed with economic security and people who love you, my kids are going to want me to take them to school tomorrow morning, regardless of what stupid shit I say this afternoon on a podcast.

if you're blessed with those things, you have an obligation to speak what you think is the truth. You don't want to be unkind. You don't want to ever make or try not to make people feel bad about themselves. But this conversation around masculinity, I think, is an important conversation. It's also a dangerous one because people make a caricature of your words. They make a cartoon of what you're saying and they take it to an ugly place and you get attacked. And sometimes they are right and you're wrong. But it's worth it.

You know, it's an important conversation. And so, but yeah, in some, when people come after you, and I get a lot of it on Twitter, and some of it might just because I'm, you know, I'm a little bit too sensitive sometimes, there's just no getting around it. It hurts. Speaking of metaphors, I think the mark, when I, like, deconstruct excellent communicators, storytellers, they do this really well. And you don't even necessarily realize it unless you're really thinking deeply. and you constantly do this.

And I think it's so hard. It's something that I have not built any skill for yet, and I'd love to. Is this a naturally kind of ingrained part of you that you, like the peanut butter and chocolate of whatever, right? The regular sayings, these metaphors that bring something to life or make you think differently. I've met some other, I'm thinking of a former prosecutor who actually is an editor for my books. He does this all the time. Like, how do you do that?

How do you come up with these things? So how, what is it in your brain that helps you create these metaphors, probably sometimes on the fly or in your writing as well? Again, you're being generous. So it's like everything else. Any other skill is oration or whatever it is. The skill is a decent amount. I think it's probably 51% nature. My father was this charming Scotsman who ended up later in life without a college degree giving management seminars.

He could just hold a crowd. And I think I inherited some of that from them. And then the rest is nurture specifically practice. I stood in front of 300 kids, when I say kids, 27-year-olds, second-year-olds, twice a week, sometimes five times a week for 20 years. I just have a lot of practice in front of people. And like you have, you're already blessed that. You have a great voice.

You have, that is not your fault. You were born with a great voice. And when people hear you on a podcast, you will have more credibility than you deserve. But occasionally when I hear an interesting turn. a phrase or an interesting metaphor for something or great data, I make a mental note and I wait till there's an opportunity to do stuff on the fly. I think people would be shocked how few David Letterman's jokes were impromptu. They give them a series of jokes. This is what we're talking about. Here's the opportunity to use this soundbite. And when I go into, I was on MSNBC last night

promoting my book, I kind of have these talking points. And I know, and there's certain jokes and certain phrases, I know I will get a chance to use. So when you hear something, a really interesting idea, thought, chart, piece of data, do yourself a favor. And I'm not as good as I should be, but I have a good memory. Take out your phone and in notes, write it down and have an opportunity to use it again. And people prepare differently. I'm more kind of winging it. I like to, even if I bumble on my words, I find that it comes across as more authentic.

and other people feel more comfortable standing in the mirror and just going through talk kind of very meticulously. It's just sort of what works for you, but it's like anything else. It's nature, and it's just a shit ton of practice. I mean, ministers and rabbis are in front of their congregation every Sunday. What do you know? They get really good at it. So like anything else, some of it you're born with,

and some of it is just practice. Typically at the end of each of my conversations, I ask my guest for career slash life advice for someone who's a bit earlier in their career. And every once in a while, even though this is going out of style, but every once in a while someone will give the follow your passion advice, even though there's the Cal Newport book and certainly your stuff's out there. When you hear and see somebody say follow your passion, what do you think?

Well, I think it's dangerous advice because people usually mix the word passion with something involving sports, owning a nightclub or restaurant. I wanted to be an athlete. I would have liked to have made my living as an athlete. And fortunately for me, I went to UCLA Athletic Department disavowed me of that notion really quickly, really crisply. But typically speaking, the sex appeal of an industry is inversely correlated to the return on investment. And that is, I don't invest in anything cool. A friend of mine is starting a member's only club for artists and people in the entertainment industry.

I won't get near it. Another friend of mine is starting at healthcare software company for healthcare maintenance workers. Sounds awful. I want to put a gun in my mouth when he describes it to me. And I'm like, that's money. That's where money is. So what I would say is find something that you're really good at. And also look at the industry.

You can make a really good living if you're in the top quartile of accountants. To make a really good living as an actor or as a basketball player, you have to be 0.0001%. So look at what you're really good. Just try and find your talent. That's your job. Don't find your passion. Find your talent. Now, generally speaking, you can't be really great at any.

you don't enjoy or you hate. I like numbers. I like data. I like communicating. So I knew that was where I was going to be. But I knew I was not even, I wasn't even the 90th percentile of athletes, much less 99.99. A lot of my friends from UCLA went into Hollywood and into media. And I thought, okay, I can write well, but I'm not in the 99.9th percentile to be a script writer. You have to, I mean, there's just millions of scripts. So what do you grade at? Find it. And then invest the requisite 10,000 hours bullshit, breaking through hard things. Because what happens is when people say follow your passion, work is hard. And the only thing you know that's going to happen in the work world is injustice. You will get fired. Someone less talented than you will get

paid more. You know, there will be bullshit at work. But your ability to persevere through those things is important because what happens is you think, well, I'm not enjoying this. It must not be my passion. No, it's called work. And I would say this. Jay-Z followed his passion. And as a billionaire, assume you are not Jay-Z. And if you're really good at something and you can become amazing at it, the accoutrements of being amazing at something and applying grit to it, camaraderie, money, people attracted to you, prestige, all of those things will make you passionate about whatever it is. The world's best tax accountants are passionate about tax law because they get all sorts of prestige and they find a circle of people that just think

They're incredibly impressive. So I'm more about find your talent and be very wary at a young age of people telling you to just follow your passion. I've noticed a lot of your recent interviews. You ask, especially guys, about being a great dad. I know from having a podcast that I usually ask questions like that because that's what I'm most curious about.

So I would imagine it has to be one of the things that you're most curious. about what have you learned since it seems that you've had this big shift in focus on asking others about what it means to be a great dad are you a dad ryan yes how many kids do you have you have two little ones right five fucking a five kids yeah how old are they 15 to eight geez that's i mean that just boggles my mind. Look, I think I do initially, and I'm speaking, this is pulse marketing. This is what changed for me? When my kid came marching out of my girlfriend, I got terrified because I thought, okay, it's no longer about me. It's really, I think the first time somebody

dies is sort of when you grow up or you recognize the harshness of life. Someone you love deeply and who loves you a great deal, we'll get sick and die. That's part of life and just the harshness, the raw harshness of life is just hits you square in the face. Scott, I'll tell you, I went to the funeral this week of a 39-year-old guy who had medals draped throughout the funeral home of winning triathlons,

cancer, you know? And it's just like, oh, anyway, it's still emotional right now. To think about that, but he's like, And he's got two kids, you know, wife who's my wife's like best friend. Just like, oh. So, yeah, I'm with you. The unimaginable happens to everybody. And it's impossible to understand and some good things come out of it around perspective

and the finite nature of life and how important it is to be brave with your emotions. And that any embarrassment or fear around risk or fear about loving people sort of you realize, well, that fear is just stupid because we're all going to be dead soon. with that the mortality rate is 100%. The other key, I think, moment in your life is when you have a kid. And as a man, I felt, and it's why the Breaking Bad franchise, I think, was just so incredibly powerful. I immediately thought, and it's crass, we don't talk about it. I'm like, my first thought was not, oh, I love this thing.

I didn't love my kid when it first came out. I fell in love with it. They're supposedly, they say there's this hallmark version where you look at this thing and you're in love. what I felt was I need to make more money. My wife is going to, my wife was really good at making money, or now my wife, my then girlfriend, she worked at Goldman Sachs, but she was going to need to take time off. And I thought, I'm the man.

I got to go hunt the wildebeest and bring it home. I got to protect my family. And in a capitalist society, it's unfair, but it's true. Your kid's opportunities and lifestyle and your family's lifestyle is largely driven by economics. And whether you like that or not, that's the system you have signed up for. So I've just started working all the time.

I've always worked a lot, but I took some time off or I kind of wound down and sort of just was a single guy living in New York and really enjoying myself. And when my kid came along, my first thought was, I've just got to make more money. And it was a crass. I've either got to make more money or I've got to figure out a way to lower our burn

because living in New York with a kid is just an extraordinary, requires extraordinary lubrication of resources. So one, I think for me, it was I'm responsible. I think young men should take economic responsibility at some point for their parents and for their family. And by the way, sometimes taking economic responsibility for your family is acknowledging and respecting that your partner may be better at that whole money thing and getting out of the way and being more supportive of your partner. I think that's also a demonstration that you're a man and you're serious about economic security. But the first was, I'm responsible for bringing home the bacon, quote, unquote, and I got very

serious about work. Two, there's no such thing as quality time. When your kids are going somewhere in your home, offer to drive them. I find being in the car is amazing because they're not looking right at you. They don't have pressure. and occasionally they just say something that gives you insight into what they're thinking. And there's no such thing as Klaught at a time. These things are just so accidental.

You're in your room and your kid says something and you just think about it. And it's wondrous or you have that moment of engagement where you feel closer to your kids and you just can't force it. Also, I had this vision that my kids would really be into CrossFit and, you know, Game of Thrones. and management books because I thought they're going to love me and admire me so much, they're going to want to engage in what I engaged in. The only way I could engage with my father growing up was to kind of pretend to like golf because that's all he enjoyed. And when you find out if you want to really engage with your kids, you've got to do the shit they're into. And my

kids are into things I'm not into, and it's painful. They like to play board games, which is the seventh ring of hell for me. But I play board games because occasionally we get one or two moments of engagement. So if you're fortunate enough to, I'm really into soccer right now. And one of the, you know, we go to Premier League games all the time in the UK now we're living in London. I have no interest in sports any longer. But I'm going to soccer games all the goddamn time because my kids, for some reason, have gone football mad. And we connect and we engage with each other. And then the basics you've heard, the best thing you can do for a kid in terms of his ability to have healthy relationships with women is to show.

a lot of respect for your mom and show a lot of respect for your partner. I think that they model the way you treat the women in your life. But, you know, those are those are kind of the places I would start. It's just all about time. The realities that you should take economic responsibility for the household and also just being just they will model you. They will model. I stopped drinking a lot. I tried to dial down my marijuana smoking because I have a 15 year old in the house. I'm like, He's going to figure out what I'm doing, and he's going to decide that's going to be cloud cover for what is acceptable for him. So I'm trying to, quote unquote, if you will be a good role model, be very engaged. Anyways, all that Hallmark Channel stuff.

I think it's pretty accurate. Your latest book, which we've touched kind of on it, is called A Drift, America and 100 charts. And I mentioned before the prolific content creation and production kind of schedule you've created. what made this, the last one I know you got around, but what made this the book for right now? I think if you look at things from a, well, if you could only do one headline for the last hundred years, it would be America, Britain, and Russia, turn back fascism.

That would be the one headline. If you could only have one newspaper headline for the last hundred years, it would be that we, British brains, Russian blood and American brawn, turn back the greatest threat to humanity of the last several hundred years. If you could only have one headline for the last 50 years would be American-led prosperity has just been unprecedented. I think we just have so much to be proud of.

And I think the most noble organization in the history of humanity is the U.S. government. And I find it very distressing that while our most loyal, our most patriotic citizens are veterans because they invest so much in our country, similar to the way you become just unnaturally invested in the well-being of your kids because you invest so much, veterans are our most patriotic. I find right now our least patriotic are the most fortunate, and that is tech billionaires who constantly say shit like government needs to get out of the way as they're cashing subsidies for their EVs or government should just, government is always inefficient as they invest in and make billions off of companies. The most valuable companies in the world all have one thing

in common. I don't care if it's modern, if it's Google, if it's Apple. They're all built off of the investments funded by middle class Americans where government had a long-term vision to put a man on the moon or to put satellites in the space or to build this crazy thing communications vehicle called DARPA, which became the internet, or to invest in the medical research programs at Vanderbilt for vaccines. And it just, it drives me crazy that these people would be so ungrateful that they would begin immediately start shitposting America. So I think young men are failing. I think we have a lack of patriotism, a lack of connective tissue. I'm really into World War II, And I have this wonderful image, this colorized image of men getting off the landing craft at D-Day and Normandy, just as they got off the landing craft. Two-thirds of them would not get off that beach. Average age 26, average salary on an inflation-adjusted basis, $800. And I can't imagine any of them knew who was a Republican or a Democrat left or right of them. And I find it just so disconcerting that 54% of Democrats are worried about their kids marrying a Republican. I find it just upsetting that a third of each party thinks the other party is the mortal enemy.

America will never have greater allies than other Americans. So I feel like we need more connective tissue. I think we need to celebrate our victories, but I think we need to join hands with our brothers and sisters across the nation and our allies again and restore us the great middle class. China's brought a half a billion people into the middle class in the last 50 years. We've shed tens of millions. And the middle class is full stop the key to a healthy society. They fight our wars.

They pay our taxes. is you can't really accomplish anything without a thriving middle class. And I also think we have opportunities around education, around technology, and to solve, I think the biggest things we face are trivial versus some of the things that people face in the middle of the last century.

And there's this illusion of complexity that these problems are intractable. No, they're not. We can absolutely, there's absolutely nothing wrong with America that can't be fixed with what's right with it. So the book is an attempt to identify what I think are kind of the exesest, potential threats and then proposed solutions.

I love it. Adrift, America and 100 charts, really well done, like all of the stuff that you produce, man. I really appreciate your time, Scott. I'd love to continue our dialogue as we both progress, man. Yeah, thanks so much, Ryan. And, you know, you're doing God's work. You're doing great work here and five kids. I just, I can't. That, I, the fact that you're, you're obviously in good shape. You look well, you look well rested. But my gosh, that is crazy. How many boys, how many girls? So I take what you say seriously when it comes to you should sweat more than watch other people sweat. Like when you said that, I mean, I played college football and after college a little bit.

But that, I really believe that, man. I think that's a problem today is you look around and be like, what are you doing? Like you get one body. Again, I know that there are things that happen, but you got to take care of that thing, man. Like, I know you're a big proponent of that. Yeah, this is not a rental. You own this thing. And I've always said to people under that are your age, you should be able to walk in any room

and know one of two things, that if shit gets real, you can either kill and eat everybody or you can outrun them. And you're going to be happier. You're less prone to depression. You'll have an easier time finding a mate. You'll be kinder because you won't feel physically threatened by other people because you're strong. I think physical fitness, if you look at our history, we were either hunting or gathering and

we're happiest when we're outside and in motion. exercises is the antidepressant. I agree. It should be top priority because if this dies or fails, all the other stuff. The rest doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. All right, man, I know we're over. I really appreciate it.

Like I said, I'd like to keep talking as we go. Thanks, man. Love it. Good luck. I enjoy my conversations with Scott Galloway because he's not afraid to share his perspective. And if you search online, he gets criticized a ton. And some of it is justifiably so, which I think he really, realizes as we talked about during this conversation. But he's willing to share what he thinks.

He doesn't go along with the crowd. I agree with a lot of what he says, but not everything. And I think we all should have conversations and surround ourselves with people where we may be aligned on values and ethics and integrity, but not necessarily aligned 100% on how we view the world. I think that's helpful. I think that's how we learn. And Scott is a person who can do that for a lot of people. I hope you enjoyed this one as much as I did. A few takeaways from my notes. There's no such thing as quality time. There's just time. Appreciate the in-between moments, the car rides, the quote, garbage time, as Jerry Seinfeld calls it, that perspective shift will make you a more present parent and partner and friend. Then greatness is in the agency of others. When I asked Scott about how he's built his career,

his first thought was about the others who he surrounded himself with. Greatness is in the agency of others. Your ability to attract and retain talented people will be the difference in a good career and a good life and a great one. And then becoming an excellent communicator. I noted his use of metaphors and storytelling ability. And like most things in life, it's about practice. He spent 20 years teaching MBA students at the NYU Stern School of Business. And if we want to develop skills for something, we have to do it over and over and over. So if something is important to you, practice, get the reps. Do it. Again, thank you so much for continuing to spread the message and telling a friend or two, hey, you should listen to this episode of the Learning Leader Show.

with Scott Galloway, I think he'll help you become a more effective leader. And because you continue to do that and you continue to write reviews and rate the show, hopefully five stars on Apple Podcast, I get to do what I love on a daily basis. And for that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you so, so much. Talk to soon. Can't wait.