Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - Scott Galloway: This Generation is Struggling, How America Went Adrift and What To Do About It | E197

Starting point is 00:00:00 This episode of YAP is sponsored in part by Shopify. Shopify simplifies selling online and in-person so you can focus on successfully growing your business. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com-profiting. I believe America becomes more like itself every day and that is it's a loving generous place if you have money. It's a repacious violent place if you don't have money. You were born and you live in a capitalist society.

Starting point is 00:00:24 Money is important. Wealthy people don if you don't have money. You were born and you live in a capitalist society. Money is important. Wealthy people don't talk a lot about money. They want to pretend that they're just such geniuses that they don't think about money. That's like saying Roger Federer doesn't think about tennis. If you want to be good at money, you need to think about it a lot. A lot of the jobs that young men used to have

Starting point is 00:00:40 as honor amps in the middle class were generally industries that over indexed mail. Those jobs have been outsourced overseas. And over the next five years, we're going to have two women graduate from college from every one man. What we have is an entire cohort of what I call emotionally and economically unviable men. And the most violent, unstable societies in the world all have too many of the same thing, and that is a broke and lonely young man. And we are producing too many of the same thing and that is a broke and lonely young man. And we are producing too many of them.

Starting point is 00:01:09 What is up young and profitors? You're listening to YAP Young and Profiting podcast where we interview the brightest minds in the world and unpack their wisdom into actionable advice that you can use in your daily life. I'm your host, Hallitaha. Thanks for tuning in and get ready to listen, learn, and profit. [♪ Music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music Hey Scott, welcome to Young & Profiting Podcast. Thanks for having me, huh? I'm very pumped to have you on the show today. So Young & Profiters, we have Scott Galilee on the show. He's also known as Prof G.

Starting point is 00:01:52 What a thrill! Oh my gosh, you're welcome. Scott is an entrepreneur, professor at NYU Stern School of Business, best-selling author, public speaker and host of the top podcast, prof G pod. He's also been called the Howard Stern of the business world by the New York Times. And he's the author of four New York Times best selling books, including his latest release, a drift America in a hundred charts, which tells the story of America through a hundred charts with the goal of

Starting point is 00:02:20 examining our post pandemic future and how we got here by analyzing data from the year 1945 to the present day, Scott has really unique and smart perspectives on topics like the American Dream, work-life balance, masculinity, and happiness, and his messages are ones that I believe that all you young and profitors need to hear. So Scott, let's get started in terms of your upbringing and your childhood. You say your childhood was remarkably unremarkable. And I'd love to understand, do you think that you would have thought you would have been come, you know, the uber successful person that you are today or anybody around you at that time? I'd love to hear about your childhood.

Starting point is 00:02:59 Born and raised by a single immigrant mother who lived in Dytasacritory, and really, you know, remarkably unremarkable. I didn't do that well on the SAT, I did okay academically. It wasn't a sob story, we had a nice life, we took nice vacations. I had someone a rationally passionate about my well-being, which I think is kind of one of the key pillars of success, the adapting my mother.

Starting point is 00:03:22 I had nice friends, but it was, I graduated from high school with a 3.2 GPA, 1100 on the SAT, but the difference was the big hand of government lifted me up. The admissions rate at UCLA when I applied was 76% and I had to apply twice, but they let me in, and I still got, you know, I rewarded their faith in me with a 2.27 GPA undergraduate GPA. And then a second stroke of luck, Berkeley decided to let me into graduate school. And then I kind of got my act together. But I have often up until the age of 40, I talked about my background as if I overcame

Starting point is 00:03:57 something. And when I realized how I was like at older and I just came a little bit more perspective, I started to hit the lottery being born a white heterosexual male in the mid-60s meant that I came of age when there was free amazing state-sponsored education see above UCLan Berkeley. I came into my professional earning years with the processing power and the kind of the rise of the internet and the thing I was remind myself of my freshman roommate in college was born a homosexual male and was dead of AIDS at the age of 33. So I try to always keep in mind that a lot of my success is my fault. So first 40 years of my life, I would describe my upbringing as something that overcame.

Starting point is 00:04:37 Now I realize that I was more blessed than probably 99% of the public, but fairly unremarkable upbringing. Yeah, it's really interesting. We have something in common, which is we both graduated with 2.27 GPAs from under like exact GPA I swear. I went to New Jersey Institute of Technology and so was an engineering school.

Starting point is 00:05:00 And I was too immature to do well in college at the time. I was always very smart, but just not book smart. But it still was a great experience, and you say the same, that college really set you off to be successful and had you not went to college, you wouldn't have gotten this social experience that you needed. And same thing with me. So I'd love to hear about how college was beneficial for you,

Starting point is 00:05:22 and what do you think are the key factors of young people's success right now? Yeah, I was transformative for me and the way things have changed since I was a kid, my mom was really excited that in the third grade I got sent to fifth grade for math in English. But the thing is, men don't mature as quickly as women and I went to UCLA when I was 17 and I was just too immature to handle it. I abused alcohol. I ended up in the emergency room once. Terrible grades. I almost got kicked out of school. But I joined a fraternity. And I always say it was one of the best things the decisions I ever made,

Starting point is 00:05:56 because it shrunk a 30,000-person community down to something manageable for me. And I was around 22-year-old men. And I remember getting a big brother and him saying to me, you know, you need to stop smoking so much pod and take your studies more seriously. I needed that. I did had no male role models in my life. So I think greatness is in the agency of others. So it was a chance for me to make connections with people. I did learn a little bit, not a lot. but it was raised for me, was this kind of marination. It was a chance to develop social and kind of life skills. I still think college is a great plan B. I think it gets a lot of disparagement because people are looking for excuses to make

Starting point is 00:06:36 themselves feel better because it's become so unattainable because it's so expensive or so exclusionary. So I actually think we need to dramatically expand freshmen seats. It's not for everybody, but it's for a lot of people. I also think we need to dramatically expand the way we think about college and include one in two year certifications and things like specialty construction or health tech or cybersecurity. But also, Hala, I don't know, I mean, I go into UCLA, I played sports. It was just a great time. And I learned a lot about myself. I fell in love for the first time, got my heart broken for the first time,

Starting point is 00:07:09 played sports. It was just a wonderful way to kind of develop your formative years. So I have very fond memories of college. And while I acknowledge it's not for everybody, I do think that we need to do a better job of making it more accessible for more people. Because I do think a lot of people benefit from a college experience.

Starting point is 00:07:28 I think it's a wonderful experience and had I not had it, I'm a talented person. I work very hard. I think I'd make a good living selling cars or copiers. I wouldn't have been able to register the type of success and influence and economic security without the certification and experience that's offered by colleges. Yeah, and I'd love to learn more about that because I know that you've done some research or you're familiar with some data about how it's almost

Starting point is 00:07:53 a requirement to have a pedigree and to have a college degree in order to attain that 1% level of success at some of us who are listening to a show like this are wanting to achieve. Yeah, we'd describe it as certification. We're in a certification economy and that is about 50 years ago, one in four jobs for credit college degree, now it's three and four. And it doesn't necessarily have to be a traditional BA, but a certification, a different, you know, a class three drivers license, or SCUBA instructor certification, or you know, whatever it might be, the opportunity to stand out in a LinkedIn economy

Starting point is 00:08:29 that says, I'm different. I have skills, CFA, CPA, all of these things, you know, professional, if you will. Some sort of certification, a degree in nursing, are just so important in terms of developing currency. And I think your, the first piece of advice I give to people on a very basic level economically is get to a city and get certified.

Starting point is 00:08:49 Two thirds of economic growth over the next 50 years is gonna take place in 20 super cities. If you play tennis, you know that when you play with someone better than you, your game naturally rises. And when you're in a city, you're playing tennis against the best in the world. And it's competitive and it's difficult and it's expensive, but your game gets stronger.

Starting point is 00:09:05 In addition, you want to get some sort of certification. Doesn't have to be a traditional for your BRBA degree, liberal arts degree. But you need something that when people see your profile on LinkedIn, they go, okay, this person has specific skills. And it all kind of bubbles up to I think your primary mission in your 20s,

Starting point is 00:09:22 is not to follow your passion. I think that's terrible advice. I think it's to find your talent and that is figure out what you're good at and then really invest a lot of money and becoming great at that thing. And if you're great at something, the accoutrements have been great.

Starting point is 00:09:35 Money come, Rotary relevance, influence pride. We'll make you passionate about whatever it is. So that's your job. I think coming out of school is figure out what you're good at and try and become great at it. Yeah, I think that's a really smart advice because a lot of people go try to find,

Starting point is 00:09:53 follow their passion, but they're not necessarily good at it. So I recently had Alex Hermozion, the episode didn't come out yet, but he's a really smart guy and he said something that I thought that you may find interesting. He was talking about focus and he was saying how a lot of young people right now, they're

Starting point is 00:10:09 not spending enough time on one thing. They're not getting the success right away. They're not getting progress right away and they're kind of dropping it and moving on to the next shiny object. So I'd love to hear your perspective about the importance of focusing on a goal once you've sort of set out for that thing. Well, metrics are important, whether it's working out or whether it's forcing yourself to get out of the house to a certain number of days a week to try and make more connections,

Starting point is 00:10:36 whether it's saving a certain amount of money per month, you know, what gets measured gets done. So, what is it? A goal is a dream with a deadline. I think it's important to have a few metrics. I think it's also to figure out kind of reverse engineer. Where do I think a decent, a decent exercise say, where do I want to be in five years? Well, I want to have a graduate degree. Well, I want to have a hundred thousand savings. Well, I want to be living in a major city, whatever it might be. And then reverse engineer,

Starting point is 00:11:01 the likely steps and skills that you're going to need to get to that point and just kind of work your way backwards and Greatness is sort of like how do you know that's one bite at a time and then try and reverse engineer to bring it down granular Like what do I need to get done this week if I'm gonna have a graduate degree in five years What do I need to get done this week? Okay, I need to get applications for undergraduate schools I'm gonna save a hundred thousand dollars by the in five years. I need to save approximately, I don't know, $14,000 a year assuming a certain interest rate. That means this month I need to save $1,200. Well, I can't, but I can save 600.

Starting point is 00:11:33 Well, what that mean in terms of my spending this week, but basically come up with a big goal and then try and reverse engineer it and to bite-size bites that are doable. Because I just think like I said, small things add up to very big things very fast. Compound interest, sort of the most powerful force in the universe, supposedly Einstein said it, although he didn't know someone else.

Starting point is 00:11:54 But when you're a Urejala, my general thought was, I'm not going to say money because I'm such a baller, at some point I'm going to make tens of millions of dollars. But time goes really fast. And if I could give you a magic box and you could put 10 grand in that box and get a hundred grand back, how much would you put into that box? And that's just probably a lot.

Starting point is 00:12:12 You might even sacrifice or trade off some short-term things. Well, that box is just time. And it was yesterday when I was your age and I woke up on my age and I wish I'd been more disciplined. You know, I got lucky later in life professionally, but I took a lot of risk. I could have ended up in a bad spot.

Starting point is 00:12:29 And your insurance policy is just saving a certain amount of money. The algebra of wealth is pretty straightforward. Find your talent through focus, live like a stoic or live below your means, trying to always save money from a very early age. It's really powerful. Diversify, don't go all in on age. It's really powerful. Diversify.

Starting point is 00:12:45 Don't go all in on anything. It's dangerous. The market's bigger than anyone individual. Don't put all your money into dojo coin or Google diversify. And then let time take over. The best performing investors are actually dead people because they don't trade a lot. So you may want to go all in on your own business

Starting point is 00:13:02 at some point. You may want to borrow money to improve yourself, whether it's your college or some sort of certification. But generally those steps, focus, stoicism, diversification, and then letting time take over are sort of not sure if our ways to get rich, but best practices.

Starting point is 00:13:18 So the good news is I know how to get your rich. The bad news is the answer slowly, but there is an algebra to it. Yeah, that's really interesting stuff. And I'd like to go back to your story because I think that there was a very transformative point in your life. So when you were 26 years old,

Starting point is 00:13:35 I believe you were 26 years old, your mom got terminally ill with cancer. And at that moment in your life, you made a decision that really impacted what we were just talking about, focused your goals and what you really wanted in life thereafter. So I'd love to hear about that moment in your life and the decisions that you made as a result of it. Yeah, I was kind of a fuck up until that point. I had some potential.

Starting point is 00:14:00 I was smart. I had some natural gifts academically, but that I didn't really apply myself. I was a lazy, I was just sort of your classic underachiever. I don't think I was a very high character person. I didn't think much about other people. It was just me and my mom and my mom got very sick. I remember coming home, I remember the weekend, she was discharged from the hospital early after surgery and massive chemo, and I just didn't know what to do.

Starting point is 00:14:22 She was very sick, and I'm like, do I get a nurse, do I get a hospital, no hospital taker. And I remember thinking it sounds very cross-haul. I remember thinking, I just wish I had more money. I can't take care of my mom. And there's certain instincts to take over, I think, with any child, but especially the only child and especially the only child who's a male,

Starting point is 00:14:40 who's supposed to, all these instincts bubble up, that I was failing as a man and I was failing as a son. And I decided there and then that I didn't decide to be rich. I don't think you can make that decision. There's a lot of luck that comes along with it. But I decided that I was going to get my act together because I wanted to take care of my mom. And that's really when I just started getting very focused.

Starting point is 00:15:00 And I worked very hard from that point. I got very, very serious about work and trying to establish economic security. And I feel as if there's always kind of two key moments around transitioning from being coming a child to a grown-up. And I would describe myself at the age of 26 as kind of a man-child. I just focused on parting and trying

Starting point is 00:15:18 at bigger experiences and trying to have date more and more awesome women and have more and more interesting experiences and just like more. I just always wanted more. and trying to have date more and more awesome women and have more and more interesting experiences and just like more, I just always wanted more and never really sated my appetite and didn't really have kind of what I call long-term satisfaction around anything. And then my mom got very sick

Starting point is 00:15:36 and that was very eye-opening for me. So I feel like I grew up there and then the next place you grew up, I think, is when you have a kid. And that, you know, so birth and death are kind of the seminal moments in your life. And also the less than I would offer to young people is that kind of zero to 25 is really happy. There's a lot of studies on happiness and happiness in terms of longitudinally

Starting point is 00:15:58 looks like a smile. And that is zero to 25 is star wars, beer, college football games, games. It's just awesome. 25 to 45 is what I call the shit gets real time of your life. You find out that you're not going to have a fragrance named after you or you're not going to be Senator. You find out the work is hard. You have some financial stress.

Starting point is 00:16:16 Maybe you have kids, which is very stressful. Someone you love and loves you immensely gets sick and dies. And it's just, it's really a punch in the gut. You're just not ready. No one, I don't think anyone can prepare you for that. Now, relationships are stressful. We're a place of stressful. And then something happens wonderful at 45

Starting point is 00:16:32 or younger if you're soulful. And that is, you start to find joy and weird things. I don't know if your parents are ever like this, but I remember my mom, like ordering a salad, and if salad would come, and she grabbed my hand and say, look at this salad, look how beautiful this is. And I remember thinking, like, what is she talking about? and say, look at this salad, look how beautiful this is. I remember thinking, like, what is she talking about?

Starting point is 00:16:47 But now I can relate to that because I take my dogs for a walk, I'm in London right now in Hyde Park and they have this. I'm not even into art. They had a freeze festival and they had all this outdoor sculpture. I'm not into any of the stuff, but I couldn't help but stop and just marvel at it. And I'm not sure I would have stopped to smell the statues, if you will, 20 years ago. So what I tell young people who are struggling with the fact that their life isn't living up to their Instagram feed, or maybe with their parents or their university told them what happened by the time they were 30, that is life that you're going through what everyone goes through.

Starting point is 00:17:18 And to keep on keeping on, that one foot in front of the other that happiness waits for you. But there's just not getting around it. Some people sooner than others. Life hits you pretty hard, pretty fast when you hit your 20s. And I can't say it's easy, but what I can tell you is everyone goes through that. And for me, the places I grew up were around

Starting point is 00:17:38 losing my mom or when she was really sick and wanting to take care of her and then realizing it wasn't all about me when I had my first kid. Yeah. So I find this really fascinating that you're talking about this. I had a conversation with Arthur Brooks a couple months ago and he talks about this concept of fluid intelligence versus crystallized intelligence. And when you're in your 20s and your 30s, you've got all this fluid intelligence, you're able to problem solve your innovative, you're crushing it at work. And once you reach like your mid 40s, your 50s, that's when you have crystallized intelligence.

Starting point is 00:18:12 And a lot of people fail because they're trying to chase that fluid intelligence that they had in their 20s and their 30s. And they can't compete with the younger generation. And really what they need to do is turn into a coach or teacher and start teaching the younger generation if they want to, you know, have that second phase of happiness or success in their life. And a lot of people miss that. And so it's just one of the lessons that I'm really starting to unfold on this podcast is like, you've got to put in the work when you're in your 20s and 30s because you'll

Starting point is 00:18:41 be way better off doing it now than waiting until you're 1450 because it's much harder later on to attain that level of success. If your goal is monetary success and being very financially well off. Yeah, like we're siblings from another mother here and let's start with, it's not necessarily the right way, but it's, I would call call the capitalist way. And that is, I believe America becomes more like itself every day. And that is, it's a loving generous place if you have money. It's a repacious violent place if you don't have money. So you were born and you live in a capitalist society, money is important.

Starting point is 00:19:16 And wealthy people don't talk a lot about money. I almost think it's sort of unfair because I think they want to hide. They want to pretend that they're just such geniuses that they don't think about money. That's like saying Roger Federer doesn't think about tennis. If you want to be good in money, you need to think about it a lot. And I'm not saying being obsessed with it

Starting point is 00:19:34 because there's a dignity to living below your means, moving to a lower cost area, kind of working to live, not living to work. But if you are ambitious as I imagine the majority of the people listening to this podcast, get rid of or dispel the myth of balance. I had almost no balance when I was your age. I worked pretty much all the time.

Starting point is 00:19:53 Young people always find time to drink and to mate. Those instincts are so powerful that you'll find opportunities. But in terms of I had no hobbies, I didn't do it from kind of the age of 25 to 45. I don't remember much else but working. And unless you're smart enough to earn an inherent money, you're going to have to work your ass off. It's a competitive marketplace out there. And I really don't know anybody who's been very successful economically that hasn't spent the better part of 20 years doing pretty much nothing but working. And it comes at a cost.

Starting point is 00:20:26 I would say it cost me my marriage, it cost me my hair and it was worth it. And that sounds very crass, but the reason I can take my boys to World Cup, kick off early from work and take my dogs to the park, I'm in great shape for a guy in my age. The reason I have so much balance now, Halla, is because I had almost none when I was your age.

Starting point is 00:20:44 And it all goes back to this notion that you can have it all, you just can't have it all at once. And what you want to do is you want to, in my opinion, burn a lot of fuel when you're young because you don't usually have dogs, you don't have spouses, you don't have kids, you have the energy, you're learning a lot. I came out of UCLA again, kind of unremarkable,

Starting point is 00:21:04 and somehow I got a job at Morgan Stanley and fixed income. In my peers in the analyst class, we're just better educated and more talent in than me. And I decided that every Tuesday morning, I was going to go to work, and I was going to stay till Wednesday night. I would work through the night. I'd work 36 hours straight. And it kind of demonstrated it. It told everybody I came to play. I was capable of doing it. I was physically very fit. I was mentally pretty strong. And I didn't have dogs or kids who are espoused waiting for me at home. I was living with my mom. I had nothing going on. So the time, I think of a kind of a aviation reference or a rocket reference, you need to get

Starting point is 00:21:42 to outer space. And the atmosphere is very thick when you're just starting. You need to focus, you need to guide yourself on the launch pad, and then you need to burn a lot of fuel. And if you can get some success, if you can save some money, if you can get a reputation, if you can establish business relationships, if you get some credibility in the marketplace, when you do punch through out of the inner orbit

Starting point is 00:22:02 into the outer orbit, your efforts get rewarded more. I have momentum now. So I can cover much more ground with less fuel than most young people can because I have contacts, a reputation, existing business relationships, et cetera. But you got to burn that fuel when you're young. And the other thing I would tell you is time goes really fast. So I'm always about head down, get on it.

Starting point is 00:22:24 It sounds very boomer. And I want to acknowledge again, it's not the right way. It's just my way. But I'm glad I made those sort of sacrifices when I was younger because it goes really fast. And I get to really enjoy myself now. Anyway, so give up the myth of balance. It just I think it's a myth. Let's hold that thought and take a quick break with our sponsors. Young and profitors, do you have a brilliant business idea, but you don't know how to move forward with it? Going into debt for a four-year degree isn't the only path to success.

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Starting point is 00:25:42 Go right now for 50% off your no risk two week trial at trinom.com sash app. That's trinom and om.com sash app for 50% off trinom.com slash app. Yeah, I totally agree there. I mean, I have a similar story in terms that I feel like I was sort of a late bloomer too. And I hustled like crazy in terms of my work ethic. I know for five years ago I started this podcast and now I have a business, a social agency, a podcast network, all that stuff. And all I did was work for five years straight

Starting point is 00:26:22 and delay gratification and not go out with my friends. And I lost so many friends and I broke up with my boyfriend of 10 years and I didn't get married. And all these things that you're supposed to kind of do, but I don't regret it at all because I've achieved this level of success that I feel like had I not done that, there's no way I would have been where I am today. And now I'm actually on the younger side of everybody else who I'm competing with because I focused so hard for a period of time and all I did was have this singular goal of learning everything about what I needed to learn about about social and podcast and whatever. And of course,

Starting point is 00:26:56 I had other experiences that helped me before, but I have a lot of guests on the show that disagree with this point of sacrificing your relationships. For example, to focus on wealth and success. I had Daniel Pink on the show and he said that the number one reason for regret is this thing called connection regret. He studied over 16,000 people and it's this regret of not staying connected to the important people in our lives. So I'd love to understand if you think there's any sort of decision-making framework

Starting point is 00:27:29 that we should have in terms of how much do we really want this thing compared to our relationships or just your advice on, is it really impossible to manage all of that and have everything in your opinion? So everyone is going to know someone at at least on Instagram, that is good looking and great shape as a great relation to their parents makes a shit ton of money and as a food blog and donate time at the ASPCA. Assume you are not that person, you have to pick your punches. I think it's a young person you want to be very focused on your career. I think in terms of relationships, I'm familiar with Daniel pinks work and Adam Altar has

Starting point is 00:28:07 done a lot of work around regrets on your deathbed, if you will. And a lot of it comes down to not staying in touch with people, not living the life that you wanted to live, being who you were, doing things for other people, or trying to please other people. The number one regret is people wish they'd been less hard on themselves. They wish that they'd been more forgiving of their failures. But anyways, I do think that when you're young, you can get just as you can make small investments or save a small amount of money when you're young and it adds up to big amounts

Starting point is 00:28:35 in your older. I think small investments in relationships in your young, small consistent investments pay off. So I think that things you want to stay focused on are work, first and foremost. Number two is fitness, mental and physical strength. And that is run long distances and lift heavy weights in your mind and in the gym. I think you get that time back.

Starting point is 00:28:56 I think if you work out 30 minutes a day, you get that time back every day. You're just more energetic, you feel better, you have more opportunities, you're able to work harder, you have a broader selection set of mates, you feel better about yourself, you're kinder, more confident. I do think, though, you can invest in relationships early and often, quick text messages to people, having the confidence to express interest and being friends with someone, talking to strangers, accepting dinner vibes, trying to really push the limits of your comfort zone

Starting point is 00:29:25 around putting yourself in a creating serendipity. I met the mother and my children at the pool of the Raleigh Hotel, because I walked in and said, I am going to go talk to this woman. I said, before I leave, I'm going to go and speak to her. And my son's middle name is Raleigh. So there's a balance. I think those three things, work relationships and fitness

Starting point is 00:29:44 are kind of the only things you should be focusing on. But I think you can get a lot of traction as a young person. Young people are getting invited to a lot of stuff. They're very social, quite frankly, they're very attractive. So you're going to have more opportunities as a young person. There's more third spaces with a lot of other people, whether it's Coachella or the gym. It's just packed with a lot of young people.

Starting point is 00:30:04 You want to take advantage and try and make investments in that as often as feasible. And what I find generally speaking is that young people are really good at scaling socially, that they figure out those opportunities. And also being aggressive, talking to strangers, being open to stuff, because it's really important who you end up with Specifically who you have kids with is probably the most important decision you'll make in your 20s and 30s It's not where you go to work. It's not where you live a good partner will help you aggregate success and wealth a bad partner Just kind of screw up everything So what you want to do is you want to put yourself in a position to have as many opportunities as possible

Starting point is 00:30:44 So I do think it's a balance over time. There's a lot of research that shows that happiness is a function of how many deep and meaningful relationships you have, but once you have those relationships, you want to ideally start out the economic anxiety of which there's a lot in America if you aren't secure. So I think you want to, again, going back to our original notion.

Starting point is 00:31:03 I think work requires a lot of energy. But just as you make small investments every month, small investment every day, reach out to somebody. Do you want to grab brunch this weekend? I had a quick text message. I thought you did so well in that meeting. I'm so impressed with you. Talking to a stranger that you might have some interest in romantically.

Starting point is 00:31:20 I mean, there's nothing wrong with that. We've kind of conflated this. We're all, our lawyers are supposed to meet at the studios of MSNBC and decide if we're interested in each other. Things have gotten so weird around mating and human sexuality. It's okay to express interest in somebody. And if you know the difference between expressing interest and harassing someone, you have bigger problems.

Starting point is 00:31:39 But I worry people your age aren't making friends. They aren't connecting romantically. They aren't finding mentors. None of us are going to, a few of us are going to work anymore. We're definitely not going to the mall. None of us are going to the movies anymore. So where do young people find those third spaces? So work relationships and fitness is kind of my, if you will, my triangle or my pyramid. Yeah, I think that's excellent advice. And I want to spend a big chunk of time talking about young men and marriage

Starting point is 00:32:06 and mating and equality and all that stuff because I feel like it's so interesting. But first, let's kick off with some stuff in your book, Adrift. You talk about the American dream in your book. And I think there's lots of ties into what we're talking about right now. And so back in the day, it used to be that you work hard

Starting point is 00:32:23 and you could ultimately do better than your parents, but kids are age and young people, I shouldn't say age, but young people out there right now, they're not doing better than their parents were. People in their 30s are not doing as well as their parents were when they were 30 or 40. Can you talk to us about why? So sure, so first off, if you were born in 1941, there was a 93% chance you were going to do better than your parents. So unless you had some sort of physical or emotional disability, you were going to do better.

Starting point is 00:32:52 Now it's 49%. So for the first time in the history of America, a 30-year-old man or woman isn't doing as well as his or her parents were at 30. That creates tremendous shame, anxiety, and rage. Because the ultimate compact compact population has with its society is that if I play with the roles in work hard, my kids will do better than me. And now you have over half of people under the age of 30, not living with a friend or a romantic partner, the living at home.

Starting point is 00:33:14 So you have constant reminders that you're not doing that well called mom and dad. And this creates anxiety and rage and shame for both the parents and the kid. And I think a lot of our dissatisfaction polarization in our country right now stems directly from that. I think it is a concerted effort that has taken place deliberately. The entrenched incumbents will claim that it's these big, this impact of these uncontrollable, big, intractable forces polarization or globalization or network effects. I think it's been a concerted decision by people a bit older than me to transfer wealth from young people to old people. People under the age of 40 used to control 19% of the

Starting point is 00:33:57 nation's GDP. Their wealth amounted to 19%. And the last 40 years has come from 19 to 9. Person over the age of 70 is now 72% wealth here then they were people over the age of 70 were 40 years ago but a person under the age of 40 is 22% less wealthy than they were 40 years ago and you think well what's happened is the economy slowed down? No productivity continues to rip upward into the right this weird thing happened in 1971, where basically wages and productivity followed each other like two snakes intertwined.

Starting point is 00:34:31 The nation became more productive, wages went up. The nation got a lot more productive, wages went way up. And then in 1971, something happened, and that is wages flatlined. And that is we decided that the majority of the spoils of increases in productivity, and now we produce more in a month than we did in in entire year in the 50s would go to shareholders. And there's some benefits to that. The markets go up.

Starting point is 00:34:51 It makes a more attractive to start a business. We have the best capital markets in the world. But the wage earners are the middle class or the young who get the majority of their income through current income started falling behind. So you think, well, okay, why did that happen? It happened because we decided to make it happen. And that is the two largest tax breaks in American society are mortgage interests and capital gains. Who owns stocks and homes, people my age, who rents and makes their money through current income, people your age. So while every year, I likely have more income than you because it comes in the form of capital gains, dividends, selling stocks, I pay a lower tax rate than you do. That makes no sense.

Starting point is 00:35:32 And then if you look back on what will house has happened, our leadership, our elected representatives are the oldest in the world. And every year they get older because they have figured out a way to create and compensate where 95% of the time the income is reelected. So we have a speaker of the house that is 81, a centimonority leader that is 82, a centimonjority leader that is 72, and a president that if he's reelected will leave the West lawn for the last time in Marine one at the age of 86. And his competitor will be an obese 82 year old if he gets reelected and leaves for the last time. And then the first two states, the dictate the presidential race are Iowa and Maine, two

Starting point is 00:36:11 of the oldest states in the union. So what do you have? You end up with programs like Social Security and people, that's a third rail. I can never run for office because I've said, I don't think Social Security is executed well. Why are we, when I say we, why are you in your cohorts working cohorts? And I'm still one of them. And I'm under the age of 50, why are you transferring a trillion and a half dollars of wealth every

Starting point is 00:36:33 year to the wealthiest cohort in the history of the planet, US seniors? Shouldn't it be the other way around? So why the cohort that has killed it and his wealthier gets a trillion and a half dollars from young people in the form of social security, I'm not saying we should do away with it. It's no reason why I should ever get social security. There's no reason my dad should be getting social security and people say, well, it's a pension I put money in.

Starting point is 00:36:56 The average social security recipient will take out two to three times what they put in. It's called social security tax, not social security pension fund, meaning that a tax goes into the kitty so it's that it might help people, other people benefit the country, and you might not benefit directly from it. So everything we've done, I would argue, over the last 50 years has been to execute a transfer of wealth from young people to old people. And as a result, we end up with a breaking of the most basic of social compacts, and we end up with rage and shame.

Starting point is 00:37:27 And I think we can fix it. We need to bring down the cost of education. Kids can no longer access the American Dream as easily. Housing is skyrocketed because we made taxes lower. So money went into the market. If you're already on a home, it's great. But what if you're trying to buy a home? It's gotten so incredible.

Starting point is 00:37:43 It's not, what are you trying to get a degree? So I think we have we can the bad news is we have transferred all this wealth from young to old people. The good news is these are problems of our own making and we can unmake them. But we have to revert to where past generations were and that is willing to make sacrifices to invest in the health of younger generations. And some, you know, they talk about the greatest generation, baby boomers are by far the greatest generation. It seems like everything we do is such that we can upgrade, upgrade Nana and pop up from carnival cruises to crystal cruises.

Starting point is 00:38:15 It needs to stop. We need to start investing in young people again. Yeah. And what do you think the implications are for the future if we don't start investing in young people? Violence and Revolution. Well, you have here, it has so many knock-on effects because who it's really hurt as young men, and that is a lot of the jobs that young men used to have as honoramps in the middle class were generally industries that over index male, manufacturing,

Starting point is 00:38:39 front line work. Those jobs have been outsourced overseas. In addition, once we level the playing field academically, women just blew by men. Women are more mature, they're more disciplined, they're better at delanguardification, and over the next five years, we're going to have two women graduate from college from every one man. Now, you think, well, fine, women deserve it. It's their time. There's a lot of knock-on effects here, though. So, we don't like to talk about this on the left, but essentially, women made socioeconomically horizontal in up, men horizontally and down, or put another way, a woman with a college degree is an interested in marrying a man without a college

Starting point is 00:39:12 degree. So you have a lack of marriages become a luxury item. If you're a man and you're in the upper quintile, there's a 75% chance you'll get married. If you're in the lowest quintile, it's a 25% chance you're going to get married. So you have a lot of loneliness on both ends and you have this mating inequality where if Tinder were a country, it would be like Venezuela. And that is, if you have 50 men and 50 women on Tinder, 42 of the women will show all of their attention to just eight men, leaving 42 men fighting over eight women. Because women have a much finer filter around mating. The guy see a picture on Tinder and go,

Starting point is 00:39:47 oh, she's cute, swipe right. Women have much finer criteria. And when they can apply it to everybody because everybody is available online or at least theoretically, they become, they get a chance to implement their filter. Whereas before we had these geographic mating ring fences, you went to temple every Friday.

Starting point is 00:40:04 There were eight single women and eight single men and you kind of all slowly but surely, you know, paired off and figured it out. Now the top 10% of attractive misogynist of males engage in what I call Porsche polygamy. And that is they get 80 to 90% of the interest, which doesn't lead to long-term relationships and quite frankly bad behavior. 50 to 90 in terms of attractive misogynist of men do okay or the same. and the most likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely to be a more likely Generally speaking, online dating has just made it a little bit shittier for all women. So what we have is an entire cohort of what I call emotionally and economically unviable men. And so women are leveling up and it's great, but they're not interested in the men our society is producing right now. And the most violent, unstable societies in the world all have too many of the same thing.

Starting point is 00:41:02 And that is a broke and lonely young man. And we are producing too many of the same thing. And that is a broke and lonely young man. And we are producing too many of them. So leveling up and making a massive investment in young people vocational programming, more seats, freshmen seats in universities, tax and fiscal policy that restores some of that income and wealth to younger generations, that will level up all young people,

Starting point is 00:41:20 but it'll have a disproportionately powerful effect on men who have taken the brunt of some of these structural changes over the last 40 years. We'll be right back after a quick break from our sponsors. Hear that sound, young and profitors? You should know that sound by now. But in case you don't, that's the sound of another sale on Shopify. Shopify is the commerce platform that's revolutionizing millions of businesses worldwide. Whether you sell edgy t-shirts or offer an educational course like me, Shopify simplifies selling online and in person so you can focus on successfully growing your business. Shopify is packed with industry leading tools that are ready to ignite your growth, giving you complete control over your

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Starting point is 00:48:12 I am like loving this topic and I have a really funny story to share that I think correlates with a lot of your data and research. So I have a social media client. His name is Marshall Goldsmith. He's this legendary executive coach, bestselling author. I manage his social media. And so whenever he meets with me and my business partner Kate, he's always telling us like, I don't understand how you girls aren't married. And he's just like all the young men today, they're just terrible. You guys have to marry down.

Starting point is 00:48:35 My daughter had to marry down. If you guys want to get married, you've got to think about marrying down. And he's like, the only way you guys are going to get married is if you marry down, which I like, we laugh. We're both in happy relationships, but and we laugh at him because we're like, okay, Marshall, like, but it actually correlates with what you're saying. So I'd love to understand what is marriage rates like in this country?

Starting point is 00:48:59 Are people getting married less? And how does that impact the economy and impact society overall? Well, it depends on the cohort. Well, through people kind of middle income to upper income, their marriage rates are holding mostly strong. People having kids later in life or having fewer kids. So we could run into a birth-earth, which is bad for the economy, fewer people to support those social care payments. Another myth is overpopulation.

Starting point is 00:49:24 It's time we just stop talking about it. And that is when you have a kid, that kid, you're sure that kid will take resources, maybe produce carbon, maybe eat meat or other crimes against humanity. But most likely that person, that kid, that baby girl or baby boy, is gonna come up with wonderful innovation

Starting point is 00:49:42 that makes the world a better place. You need more people. And this notion of overpopulation, there's certain parts of the Earth that are overpopulated. But just get on a plane from New York to San Francisco, look down 100 times, 95 times, there's nothing. There's literally nothing. And so, we want to encourage economically and emotionally viable people to have kids. Kids are a wonderful thing. I would have never thought it. I had no interest in kids, but I've really enjoyed it. The marriage rates

Starting point is 00:50:11 flat to declining across society as a whole, but it really gets, which really fallen off a cliff for people who are middle or lower income or on the bottom, the bottom median. And I never thought I would have said this. I never wanted to be married. I don't think you have to be married to be happy. But generally speaking, people are happier when they're in some sort of committed monogamous relationship. And at the end of the life, you're talking about Stephen Pink.

Starting point is 00:50:37 Generally speaking, the things they remember the most are family. They don't want to be around. Awesome people are famous celebrities when they go. They want to be around loved ones. They love immensely and who love them immensely. So the issue I see is I see a lot of young men who are becoming economically and emotionally unviable. They get excluded socially. They don't find a job. They don't make money. They don't get out. They don't develop social skills. They don't develop professional skills. And they once they hit a certain point, they don't get out, they don't develop social skills, they don't develop professional skills,

Starting point is 00:51:05 and once they hit a certain point, they almost become kind of unviable. And also a romantic relationship is a great guardrail. Stop getting high every night, get in shape, we make each other better. Spouses, boyfriends, girlfriends, friends, they motivate each other, they're competitive. And to compete is a Greek term that means to strive together to make each other better when the Olympic athletes

Starting point is 00:51:28 Were training they found with they trained together. They made each other faster and mates friends girlfriend's boyfriend spouses You know, they're great guardrails and when you isolate young men who have that again that immature prefrontal cortex And then they can find a reasonable facsimile of dope that you used to get through playing sports, or from starting a business, or from making money, or from kissing someone for the first time. When you can get a reasonable facsimile of that dope ahead

Starting point is 00:51:57 on your phone or on your computer, it lowers your mojo to get out of the house, and those skills continue to atrophy. So one of the things I tell young man, I coach a lot of young man, you have to get out of the house every day. You have to force yourself to meet strangers. You got to start making money. I don't care if you think it's below you. I don't think you, you know, work at a CVS, turn on door dash, turn on, whatever it is. Get a taste for flesh, start making money.

Starting point is 00:52:21 Money is a wonderful thing and the key to making more money is to make some money. Go up to a stranger, again, join a church group of softball league, a riding group, junior college class, whatever it is, and force yourself to approach strangers to an interest in conversing with them, and interest in being their friend, and maybe who knows, even an interest in a romantic relationship.

Starting point is 00:52:41 There's nothing wrong with that. I do think men get a lot of mixed signals that approaching anybody is considered dangerous, if you will. And I think some of the wonderful thing about men is that they're more aggressive, but aggressive doesn't have to mean anything resembling any sort of physical violence. It can mean initiating conversations. And the people I get the most feedback from, feminists don't like what I say or a lot of feminists don't like what I say, although they're coming around to it. Some famous feminists have now acknowledged as a real problem taking place with the younger men.

Starting point is 00:53:11 Young men sometimes resent it because they feel as if I'm calling them in cells and they've been stereotyped. It's like just because I'm an introvert, it doesn't mean I can't have value to society. That's fine. There's some fairness. By far the cohort that is most supportive hands down our mothers. You say, my daughter's killing it. She's at Penn, my other daughter's working in PR in Chicago

Starting point is 00:53:30 and my son's in the basement playing video games and vaping. We have, we are losing an entire generation of men. And I think a lot of it comes down to a need to redefine masculinity. So it's that men feel comfortable embracing their masculinity and also recognizing the masculinity isn't it just purely men feel comfortable embracing their masculinity and also recognizing the masculinity isn't it just purely the domain of people born as males that masculinity and femininity are both wonderful attributes that can be shared by men and women, but to re-embrace

Starting point is 00:53:55 and celebrate what I call a modern or mature form of masculinity. But I think that your generation is suffering from a crisis of loneliness, a lack of connection to each other and a lack of connection to the country. And those Japanese soldiers who went into the hills at the end of World War II accomplished nothing. Nothing great is accomplished alone. If you're spending a lot of time alone, you're not going to accomplish much. I don't care. You need to be around other people.

Starting point is 00:54:21 You need to find new relationships. That is even more than anything, more than economics, more than certification, the thing I would wish for people in their 20s and 30s is that they have more opportunities to establish more relationships. I think it's, and I just came off this riff about working all the time, but you can establish a lot of deep relationships at work.

Starting point is 00:54:38 I didn't have a lot of romantic relationships in my 20s. I was very immature, I was very insecure, but I had great relationships at work. I had great friendships. I became very involved in my mom's well-being. So I always say that love is out there. What's difficult for women is that they're so unfairly judged through the lens of romantic relationship,

Starting point is 00:55:00 their success or lack thereof through one type of relationship. And you can't force that. Sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn't. But you should always think, okay, how do I have really wonderful productive relationships to make little investments every day? And some of that is forcing yourself into uncomfortable spots, initiating conversation with someone

Starting point is 00:55:18 and then what line at Starbucks, asking someone to coffee out at work, expressing admiration for someone and trying to establish a friendship. And because we spent so much time alone in the last two and a half years, when you can't, I'd rather stay home and watch Netflix or young men think I'd rather stay home and play video games or trade on Robinhood or watch porn. No, you need to get out there.

Starting point is 00:55:37 Yeah, I love that you had this conversation with us because most of my listeners surprisingly are male. I have like an 80% male audience who are these young men that you're talking about. Really? Yeah. And so I'm really happy that you had this conversation. And for the women who might be listening, I feel like we all feel this.

Starting point is 00:55:59 We see other women doing really well. We probably have a cousin or a brother or somebody who's struggling. What can we do as women, whether it's in terms of how we look for a partner and our perspective on that or what should we be doing? Because obviously, I don't think we're going to get affirmative action taken away or anything like that. I think women are going to continue to kind of thrive in the workplace. And the other thing I wanted to pick your brain about is the fact that leadership is still

Starting point is 00:56:28 men, right? Politicians are still men, so there's still a lot of work to do. And so I just left here your thoughts on that. I know that was kind of rambling. I'll take that a reverse order. So there's been more, the one thing all of our elected officials have in common is about 95 or 98% of them have college degrees. We've decided that kind of realistically is the logical criteria for who we want to

Starting point is 00:56:48 lead our nation or make big decisions. But we're inherently very sexist as a culture. And when it comes to leadership and elected representatives, we've been graduating more women from college for 40 years than men. And yet only 28% of our elected officials are female. We can flate voice and height with leadership qualities. So show me a 410 woman with a high pitch voice using incredibly smart, incredibly high hardworking and a low president of local school board. Show me a guy who's fairly smart,

Starting point is 00:57:17 but tall and has a great voice. That guy's name is Senator. So we need to educate early on what's required, what are the key components of being a good leader and also help people modulate for that. We just instinctively think of leadership as being powerful and we associate powerful with certain audio and visual sensation. So I think some of it,

Starting point is 00:57:40 some of it is just education. The other thing is, I think you asked me for advice on women, younger women, and what I would say is, is that, I don't wanna say lower standards, what I wanna say is, be open to the coffee or the second coffee. And that is, the problem with online dating

Starting point is 00:57:59 is it's very too dimensional. You see their looks, and then you make an assumption around their wealth. And women have three criteria for mating, or at least the research shows number three is kindness number two is intelligence and number one is resources and so It's natural that they will make a judgment and then they will make kind of a Zero one yes or no call what I would suggest is pushing the limits of your comfort zone to give more people a chance and if the day goes Okay, but not great be open to a second date to see if it goes from okay to good and then maybe to great. Every long term relationship I've

Starting point is 00:58:30 had, I wouldn't have guessed at the beginning. It was going to become a long term relationship. And we live in such an economy where there's so much fluidity of opportunity that we end up never really pursuing opportunities to their potential. It's like, well, that wasn't great. That wasn't magic, so I'm back on the apps, or I'm just not interested, or I'd rather stay at home and watch Netflix and work. I think that there needs to be a meeting of the minds. I think men need to get their act together emotionally

Starting point is 00:58:57 and economically. I think we just need better men. And part of that is, more men, my age, need to take more of an interest in younger men and help mentor them. I think we just need better younger men. And what I would ask you is that women think, okay, how can I be more open to exploring stuff

Starting point is 00:59:14 and see if it might lead somewhere wonderful? Because the wonderful thing about human sexuality is it involves smell, it involves vibe, it involves humor, it involves seeing how that person behaves around their family. And I think a lot of people, especially women, will say in the beginning, I didn't have that type of interest in this person. And it grew. Their criteria are more subtle and more what I call long term. And we live in an economy in a society that discourages that type of long-term exploration.

Starting point is 00:59:46 Does that make any sense? I always get uncomfortable giving women advice because I don't feel I can relate to them as well. No, it does make sense. I'm very aligned with a lot. You don't have to worry about that with me. I'm aligned with so much of what you're saying. The last thing I want to talk about in terms of this, and then we can close out because I know that you have to go soon. So, I had gotten out of a relationship, but I was implanting on asking this question, but I think it's interesting. So I had gotten out of a relationship two years ago.

Starting point is 01:00:11 Now I'm in a happy new relationship, but I was with somebody for 10 years, and I remember that when I used to go out, I would get approached by men all the time. They would come up to me all the time. Now men, I would find that like younger men still have have like the, I look a lot younger than I am. And so younger men would still approach me, but people my age, men my age would never come up and talk to me when I was single. And I thought this was so strange because I had been out of the dating game for 10 years. And

Starting point is 01:00:39 so I'd love to hear your perspective on like men actually getting the confidence to approach people in person. Because I feel like people need to hear about this. Yeah, so I think man have gotten a lot of mixed signals here. There was an ad that Gillette ran to let the best of man can get during the midst of the Me Too movement. They basically tried to redefine manhood and there was this one scene that really rattled me and that is a guy sees a really attractive woman and he stands up to go approach her and his friend gets the wince and says no, no, no, don't do that, not cool, not cool. And I thought that's where we are. Men aren't supposed to approach strange women.

Starting point is 01:01:13 And the people, I find the thing I don't like about telling men how to behave and to tone at their aggression down is that it's people who already have mates telling them to do that. It's like, where are we supposed to find, where are people supposed to meet each other? And again, I'm making reductive comments here and I don't have the research on it. But I think women, especially women, younger women would actually appreciate in a thoughtful, respectful way men taking more initiative. And I consistently hear from young women, no man ever approaches me, because I think men have been given mixed signals. One, they lack confidence because

Starting point is 01:01:50 quite frankly, their lack of confidence is common sense. They're not going to college, they don't have jobs, they're just not, they're not impressive young men, and they're failing. And they know that, and they're getting, they're getting that cemented every day by their parents and the world telling them okay You're you're not living up to the expectations we have of of people But also this notion that approaching a stranger or asking someone out a third of relationships begin at work What's the general viewpoint on sex at work that it's almost borderline illegal and If a man or a woman is in a very senior

Starting point is 01:02:26 position, they should be very botan from relationships at work. They can take that shit off campus. There's a lot of awesome things to being a senior level person in business. One of them should not be leveraging your power to find romantic relationships. But I've had three weddings. My last company that I sold was L2. I've had three weddings in the last month for people at L2, including one wedding where they met at L2. That's wonderful. So it's okay to at work. You have to be very careful. You want to make sure, especially if you're senior to that person not to abuse your power, but it's okay to express romantic interest. And I worry that we've been sending mixed signals to men. Men need to embrace their masculinity, but first we have to identify what is masculinity. I think of it as garnering the skills and strengths

Starting point is 01:03:08 such that you can protect and advocate for others. And a lot of it is being, okay, a little bit more aggressive. I think that woman's interesting. I'm gonna go talk to her. If she's not interested, I will get that vibe almost right away. We will both part company, I will be polite. And you know what? You're both gonna be fine.

Starting point is 01:03:27 And that rejection or that ability to endure that rejection is a function of your success. The reason I am successful is I've had businesses failed and it never destroyed my confidence. It denoted it at the time, but it didn't stop me from going out and starting another business. And the reason I've always been able to not always,

Starting point is 01:03:43 but most of the time, been able to attract potential mates that are more interesting and much better looking than me is that I'm not afraid of rejection. If I'm standing in line somewhere and I'm attracted to someone, I'll start talking to them or when I was a younger man, and I'd encourage younger men to do that. And if she's polite, but not interested and you can pick it up, that's fine. You're going to be polite, and you're both going to move on with your lives. So, success as a function, success professionally and romantically is a function of rejection, specifically, you're willing us to endure it. And my advice to young women is that when, like I said, just play things out a little longer and see where it goes. Yeah. Well, I feel like this has been such a great discussion. We covered a

Starting point is 01:04:24 variety of topics. We didn't get through everything I wanted to, but I feel like this has been such a great discussion. We covered a variety of topics. We didn't get through everything I wanted to, but I feel like we covered a lot of ground. I always end the show with two last questions. And here's where you can say anything that you feel like is really important that you want to share with my audience. So what is one actionable piece of advice you can give my young and profitors so they can become more profiting tomorrow. What is one thing they can do today to become more profitable tomorrow? Look at your phone, look at the screen time, find four to eight hours of wasted time, Robinhood, TikTok, Twitter, streaming, and reallocate that time into fitness and making more money. Try and find eight hours on your phone, take four of it and put it into fitness and put four of it into either working more at your current job. I don't believe in

Starting point is 01:05:09 side hustles. If you have a side hustle, it means your main hustle isn't working. The best way to economic security is to take the time you were going to spend on a side hustle and put it into your main hustle and make your main hustle amazing and become great at it. But find, try and find eight hours out of your phone. We spend way too much time in our phones. I probably spend two hours a day on Twitter. I'm addicted, it's terrible. But find eight hours a week in your phone and put four reinvest four into fitness

Starting point is 01:05:33 and four into money. Yeah, and real quick, what is the power of exercise in your opinion? What is exercise data, everyone? We're a physical species. And there's a ton of research that shows, if you exercise three to four times a week, you're less likely to have a stroke, a heart attack,

Starting point is 01:05:51 you're more likely to be kind, you're much more likely to be successful. The most common attribute of Fortune 500 CEOs isn't that they went to Ivy League schools. It's not even that they're wide or male. It's like 490 of them work out five times a week. You'll be kinder. You'll have a broader selection set of mates.

Starting point is 01:06:09 I believe anybody your age should be able to walk into any room and know, and this is a goal, and know that if chic or real, you can kill and eat everybody or outrun them. You want to feel physically strong, fast and fit. It's not about being skinny, it's not about being ripped, it's not about being ripped, it's about being a stronger version of yourself. You'll be much more mentally healthy.

Starting point is 01:06:29 It's how you process anxiety, it's how you process anger, it's key. And people accuse me of fat shaming because I talk a lot about exercise. I know some people who are very big and are very strong, and that's a wonderful thing. I do CrossFit is a huge contingent of lesbian firefighters and these women are so strong and so inspiring and don't care about the traditional norms around aesthetic as indicated by this heteronormative fashion industrial complex and they are inspiring. That's what you want to move to. You want to be a stronger version of yourself. Lift heavy weights and run long distances in the gym and in your mind.

Starting point is 01:07:06 Yeah, I asked that question because I always tell everyone you have to work out. It's not something that you can skip. It's really important. And what is your secret to profiting in life? A recognition that a lot of my success is not my fault. I try to be grateful. I try to recognize that I'm hugely blessed.

Starting point is 01:07:24 And I try and I just look at how first 40 years of my life, I was the kid who overcame, sing a mother growing up without a lot of money. And then as I got older, I realized that being born a white heterosexual male in the 60s was hitting the lottery. My freshman, you roommate in college, was exactly the same as me, except God reached into his soul.

Starting point is 01:07:44 I made him homosexual and he was dead of AIDS at 33 and neither of us had any choice over our sexuality. Every day I wake up, I realize that a lot of this is a function of being in the right place, the right time. It makes me more grateful. It makes me more appreciative. It makes me enjoy stuff more. And it makes me want to try and create more opportunity and more good fortune for other people. That's really powerful. Scott Galloway, where can everybody learn more about you and everything that you do? I'll call it a resistance feudal. I'm everywhere.

Starting point is 01:08:14 I'm Prof Galloway on Twitter. I have a newsletter called Nomers, you know, Malice. My new book is called Drift American 100 Charts. I have a YouTube show. I'm starting, I'm doing a show on the BBC called Tech Explorer with Scott Galway. So to resist this feudal, I'm everywhere. Amazing. Congratulations on all your success.

Starting point is 01:08:31 I love this conversation. Thanks for coming on. Thank you, Halla. Congrats on your success. I have to say, yeah, fam, I really enjoyed this conversation. Scott Galway is brilliant. And he has a real natural sense of humor. I'm going to say, yeah, fam, I really enjoyed this conversation.

Starting point is 01:08:43 Scott Galway is brilliant. And he has a real natural sense of humor. And he has a real natural sense of humor. And he has a real natural sense of humor. And he has a real natural sense of humor. And he has a real natural sense of humor. I have to say, yeah, fam, I really enjoyed this conversation. Scott Galloway is brilliant, and he has a real knack for making complicated social, political, and economic issues so simple and clear, and in a way that makes us perk up and pay attention. While Scott's views may seem highly critical and maybe a bit negative towards modern America, the data doesn't lie, and the only way to start to improve things is to understand what exactly

Starting point is 01:09:09 is going on under the hood. Scott believes America is a shadow of what it once was, and the issues we face as a country were only accelerated and magnified with the pandemic. There's a widening gap of income between the rich and the poor, declining access to proper education, declining marriage rates, reduced social mobility and a dwindling middle class. According to Scott, Americans today have less money, less friends, less time, less love, and consequently less of a chance at living out the American dream than previous generations

Starting point is 01:09:43 had. America is clearly a drift, but that doesn't mean we're hopeless. We still have agency over our own lives, young and profitors, and there's lots of people out there that are still thriving. Scott and I share many of the same perspectives about life. Our 20s and our 30s are mostly meant for working. Work life balance, if you want to be extremely successful is somewhat of a myth. Like Scott said, if you want to be good at money, you need to think about it a lot. Now, I'm not saying work yourself into the ground, but be realistic and understand what

Starting point is 01:10:17 you truly want. And if you put in the groundwork now and stay focused, things will accelerate and get easier as you get older. You have more resources, a bigger network, more contacts, more credibility, and as a result, you get rewarded more with less effort. But it starts with the hard work right now. Relationships, work and exercise are the top three things you need to be focused on young and profitors if you really want to live out an extraordinary life.

Starting point is 01:10:47 And to have time for all of those, it means dropping unproductive things like TV, social media if you're not using it for business, excessive partying, drugs, video games. You can have time for all the important stuff, if you put yourself on a schedule and get serious. Get out of the house, meet communities, meet people, fall in love, and make memories. I have to say, I love to both Reading Scott's book as well as interviewing him. He definitely opened up my eyes to some new perspectives and taught me things I never knew before. And I hope he made you sing critically too and made you think about your life

Starting point is 01:11:24 and gave you new insight to better navigate through everything, especially for all of my young men listeners. I hope you take heed to his advice. Thanks for listening to my interview with Scott Galloway on Younger Profiting Podcast. And if you listen learned and profited from this episode, share it with your friends and family and drop us a five star review on your favorite podcast platform. These are the best ways to support me and my team at YAH Media. You guys can also find all of our episodes on YouTube, and you can always reach out to

Starting point is 01:11:52 me on Instagram and TikTok at YAH Pithala, or you can find me on LinkedIn by searching my name, Hala Taha. I want to shout out my amazing YAH Pithala Taha, you guys are so incredibly talented, and I'm so lucky to have you all. This is the podcast Princess, Halataha, signing off. Are you looking for ways to be happier, healthier, more productive, and more creative? I'm Gretchen Ruben, the number one best-selling author of the Happiness Project. And every week, we share ideas and practical solutions on the Happier with Gretchen Ruben

Starting point is 01:12:36 podcast. My co-host and Happiness Guinea Pig is my sister Elizabeth Kraft. That's me, Elizabeth Kraft, a TV writer and producer in Hollywood. Join us as we explore fresh insights from cutting-edge science, ancient wisdom, pop culture, and our own experiences about cultivating happiness and good habits. Every week we offer a try this at home tip you can use to boost your happiness without spending a lot of time, energy, or money. Suggestions such as follow the one-minute rule.

Starting point is 01:13:03 Choose a one-word theme for the year or design your summer. We also feature segments like know yourself better where we discuss questions like are you an over buyer or an under buyer, morning person or night person, abundance lever or simplicity lever, and every episode includes a happiness hack, a quick easy shortcut to more happy. Listen and follow the podcast happier with Gretchen Rubin. At Carvana, we're in the business of driving you happy, and with the widest selection of used cars under $20,000, you're bound to find a car that'll put a smile on your face. Carvana gives you control by letting you customize your down and monthly payments.

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Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - Scott Galloway: This Generation is Struggling, How America Went Adrift and What To Do About It | E197

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