Prof G: I'm moving 75% of my money out of America

Scott Galloway

I've invested in every piece of the stack. I've done mezzanine investing, public company investing, and growth stocks. Hands down, the best asset class is distressed.

Sam Parr

I heard you say something recently, and I think this happens to us. It happens to you, and I would have to imagine you get pegged as just an influencer or a thought leader. In reality, you've built a lot of amazing companies. You talked about something the other day when you were with Michael Lewis. At the end of the podcast, you guys barely mentioned this, and it was pretty astounding. You told the story about how, when FTX went bankrupt, you made some pretty amazing trade. Can you tell Sean and me more about that story and what happened? Do you know what I'm talking about?

Scott Galloway

Yeah, so I always like to counter it with how many times I messed up. I bought Netflix at $12 a share and sold it at $10. Now it's at $1,100. So, I get it wrong all the time. I can't stand people who are constantly taking pictures of all their wins and posting them on social media. This one, however, I got right. I’m that guy who reads bankruptcy filings. I read the FTX bankruptcy filing, and essentially, they list all their assets. When you declare bankruptcy, your creditors come in and say, "Alright, we're going to take all the assets, sell all the furniture, sell all the companies, sell all the IP—whatever we can sell—and then we'll divide it up and give it pro rata to the creditors based on the claims they have." There were approximately $8 billion in claims against the bankrupt FTX. I went through the list of assets, and one of the assets was a $500 million investment in Anthropic. I thought, "Wow." I looked at when they made the investment, and for the life of me, I couldn't find the valuation. I assumed the valuation was about $5 billion, so I thought they probably own about 10% of Anthropic. It was trading, and I estimated it was worth around $40 billion. So, I thought, "Okay, their stake in Anthropic is worth 50 cents on the dollar." In other words, creditors claim $8 billion against the company, and I believe that stake in Anthropic was worth probably $4 billion. I thought, "Okay, eventually the creditors are going to get 50 cents on the dollar just on the Anthropic shares." At that time, you could buy claims against the bankrupt FTX for 22 cents. So, I bought $10 million worth of claims for $2.2 million. It's better to be lucky than good. Crypto took off, everything they had invested in went crazy, and it looks like we're going to get $1.60 on the dollar. So, that was kind of an incredibly lucky trade. There was a little bit of skill in there; I did my homework, but that's worked out. That's worked out.

Scott Galloway

Really well.

Shaan Puri

Not luck. Luck is a term that can be used for many things, but this one is not luck in the sense that you're like, "I was reading the bankruptcy claims." Alright, that's action, not luck. Then you did the work to try to figure out, like, "Okay, ballpark, what is this worth?" But you just said it in passing, like, "So I went and bought claims." Now, you know, I consider myself not a complete novice in the world of business and investing. Where do you even go to do that? I didn't... that wasn't even on the table. It's more exotic than buying a stock or even buying crypto, like going and buying bankruptcy claims. How does one even do that? And then how do you have the confidence to say, "Alright, $10,000,000"? Because you didn't need to bet size that large.

Scott Galloway

Right, so to be clear, I bought $10,000,000 in claims. I purchased them for $2,200,000. It wasn't easy. I typed in "FTX bankruptcy claims" and I found this guy named Thomas Brazell, who is living in Italy. He was making a market in them. Thomas had assembled a team because when you buy a claim, you've got to make sure that the person who claims they own the claim actually owns it. Then you've got to do some diligence, and you've got to actually legally transfer the claim. You're sending money to a third party; I mean, there is risk here. So, I contacted this guy who was making a market in it and I said, "I have some capital I want to put to work here. I'll give you 10% of the upside if you go buy these claims." He would, every 48 or 72 hours, say, "I found a basket or I found a claim of $383,000 and they want $90,000 for it." I'd say, "Great," and I'd press "yes," and he'd buy it and then transfer it into an account of mine. So, yeah, it did take some real work.

Shaan Puri

So this guy basically made two... he got, at the time, like $200,000 worth of claims. If you're giving him $10, then it sounds like it went up about eight times from there. So this guy made a million bucks just brokering these FTX claims in a way for you.

Scott Galloway

Well, he did. It was a lot of work. So, Thomas is going to make... I mean, these are famous last words because the trustee hasn't distributed the funds yet. But it looks like we're going to get $15,000,000 off of a $2 or $2.5 million investment. Twelve and a half million dollars... he's going to make a million dollars. But what he did was real work because he has a lawyer and people following up and doing due diligence. If it sounds sketchy, like, "Okay, this claim doesn't seem real," or it feels like maybe this person sold the claim to multiple parties, that happened to us. There was a kid in Italy who had sold the claim to us and sold it to a large hedge fund in the Bay Area. I had to go to the hedge fund, and they said, "Oh, this is too bad. Let's just split it." It's gone up since then, and I'm like, "Well, no. Who got the claim first? Who filed it first and got recognized?" It was me. I said, "Forget you. I want a hundred. I want all of it." I didn't use those words or not; they seemed like fairly nice people. But he was doing real work. I like this stuff, and the lesson here of all the assets I've invested in... every piece of the stack or every part of the capital structure. I've done seed... first off, I founded companies, so that's the ultimate seed. I've done seed stage investing, venture, growth, late stage. I've done mezzanine, public company investing, growth stocks, mature companies, and then I've done distressed investing where I have brought companies or partnered with someone smarter than me to go find claims against a bankrupt company or bring a company out of bankruptcy. Hands down, the best asset class is distressed. It goes to a very simple notion: the sexier an investment, the lower the returns. Venture's sexy; everyone wants to hang out with Tom Brady and Gisele. No one wants to hang out with old people and distressed investing. It smells like piss; it smells like urine. It's just like... no one wants to hang out with bankrupt companies. It's ugly, it's complicated, it reeks of death everywhere. This thing didn't work out. Do you remember? It looked like FTX. It looked like if it's trading at 22 cents on the dollar, the market is saying this might all be worth nothing.

Sam Parr

Yeah.

Scott Galloway

So, I have found that generally, the sexier the asset class, the lower the returns. If I were just an economic animal, I'd go back and learn a lot more about distressed credit. The biggest win I've ever had was bringing a consumer company out of bankruptcy. I partnered with a friend, Jason Mudrick, who runs a distressed credit shop called Mudrick Capital. We 30x'd on that investment. Granted, it took six years and was a nightmare. We almost went to zero two or three times, but we ended up...

Shaan Puri

Wait, wait, that was my best endorsement. Yeah.

Sam Parr

What was that?

Shaan Puri

We're well... this is like the only nerd podcast on Earth where we are like, "Oh, you've just... that's our sweet spot. Tell us this story."

Scott Galloway

But I always have to match it with a loss. I'm in Oddity, which is this amazing AI beauty company I own. I don't know, a decent amount of shares, and I thought I need to generate some income here. I was bored, so I sold covered calls way out of the money, right? To try and collect rent. So, the stock's trading at, I don't know, $40. I sell calls at $50 to generate some income, meaning that as long as it doesn't go above $50 in the next month, I'm fine. I hadn't sold covered calls in a long time. The next day, it announced earnings, and the stock went to $61. So, I've literally left like $2,000,000 on the table selling covered calls trying to generate income off this thing. I should have been smarter. I should have done a little bit of research, known that earnings were coming up, and known this is a great company and they're going to do really well. So, in the last week, I've literally like puked a million dollars for no reason because I didn't do due diligence.

Sam Parr

Alright everyone, really quick, this is the third time Scott Galloway has been on MFM. I also read all of his books and listen to all of his podcasts. I'm a huge fan of Scott's, and that's why we've had him on the pod so many times. HubSpot did something awesome. They took the 23 best insights from the first two episodes, but also this one—the one you're watching or listening to right now. They compiled the 23 best insights on wealth creation, spotting good deals, and building relationships, and put it all together in one really easy-to-read document. So instead of having to go and listen to all the other podcasts (which, by the way, I think you still should), you could download their document to read all of the best stuff. It's sort of like a cheat sheet or a guide on all the best insights that Scott has shared on MFM across all three episodes. It's in the link below, or you can scan the QR code. But check it out; it's in the description. Enjoy the rest of the episode!

Scott Galloway

Anyways, the company was called Enjoy. My mother died of a smoking-related illness, and a couple of my buddies said they were using a vape to get off of nicotine. This was like eight to ten years ago, and they had quit smoking using this thing called Enjoy. The company had gone bankrupt. It's considered an EDS, or Electronic Nicotine Delivery System. The equivalent of the FDA in Britain sends these out for free if you're a smoker. Let me be clear: no one under the age of 25 or anyone who doesn't smoke should vape nicotine. It's not good for you, but it's much less harmful than smoking combustibles with tobacco. Nicotine is highly addictive, but it doesn't cause cancer. It can be bad for brain development. I don't want to suggest anyone get addicted to nicotine, but I thought this was great for smoking cessation. We brought it out at a valuation of $60,000,000 out of bankruptcy. My friend Jason is just this super smart, super aggressive guy.

Sam Parr

Like, one, so you heard about this thing, and then you Googled it. You saw it was bankrupt, and then you're like, "I'm interested."

Shaan Puri

What came first, the chicken or the egg? Was it Jason who was going to go look, or did you find the company and then find Jason?

Scott Galloway

No, no, I wasn't that smart. I had heard about this company because two of my friends had quit using it. Then Jason called me and said, "I'm about to bring a company out of bankruptcy. Have you ever heard of Enjoin?" I'm like, "Oh yeah, I know the company, and I like it." So, I put $2.5 million in, and he brought it out of bankruptcy for $60 million. He said, "This is a regulatory play. We're the least bad actor here." There was Juul, which had gone up to like $10 or $15 billion in market cap but was marketing to kids and selling bubblegum flavor. They were just getting hammered, correctly and justifiably, in the press for addicting a ton of kids. At one point, about three years into the investment, high schools in the Midwest were pulling the doors off of bathrooms because so many kids were vaping. The absolute low was when there was a huge raft of kids going into emergency rooms with what was called "popcorn lung." Basically, kids were getting so addicted to vaping that they were buying the vape liquid at festivals and out of people's trunks. People who were doing home brew of this vaping liquid were cutting it with, I think, vitamin A acetate, not recognizing that it would have really negative reactions on kids' lungs.

Sam Parr

And by the way, during that era, I knew people who worked there. I'm pretty sure they gave all like 1,000 employees, from the top to the bottom, a $500,000 or $1 million bonus to retain them as employees. The press was horrible, and they had to deal with this conscience of, "Shit, I'm selling this horrible stuff." Okay, but I guess it's worth it if I get a million-dollar bonus.

Scott Galloway

So, it was...

Scott Galloway

Crazy! We really weren't cool at all. Enjoy wasn't selling to teenagers looking to go to raves; Enjoy was selling to truckers. I mean, the stats around smoking are crazy. One out of three people who buy a carton of cigarettes promise themselves it's the last time they're ever going to buy cigarettes. It is just such an incredibly malicious, mendacious, addictive substance. I think it's the second most addictive substance. I grew up in a household where, just a quick parable about me, I remember I never went to the doctor. We just weren't the kind of family that went to doctors. It was like Robitussin was our emergency room, you know? We used Robitussin for everything. I got really sick with a lung infection, and they took me to the doctor. The doctor said, "Okay, he's got a serious lung infection here. Antibiotics." And also, Tom and Sylvia, my parents, "You can't smoke." So on the way home, we rolled down the windows so they could smoke on the ride home. Then my dad went in first, got a wet towel, stuck it under my door jam, and stuck me in my room so they could continue smoking. I mean, they were so radically addicted to nicotine. My mother died of a smoking-related illness. Anyways, we brought it out for $75 million, and I'm like, kids are dying—not because of anything Enjoy or even Juul is doing, but because vaping had become so big that now kids were buying black market liquid that was damaging their health. I'm like, great! I'm this guy who claims to care about young men, and I'm putting them in the hospital. That was such an incredibly low moment for me. I remember I resigned from the board because I'm like, I just can't stay on. I was on the board of my kid's school, and the headmaster was putting out memos warning of vaping. I'm like, I am such a hypocrite. I tried to sell my stake, and there was no market for it. Jason and the CEO, Ryan, were real visionaries and said, "This is all about an FDA play. We're the best actor in the space. We're selling to people who want to quit smoking, where there's almost no youth complaints." We spent a million bucks, I think maybe a little less than that, trying to get FDA approval. They thought if we became one of the three or four companies that had FDA approval around smoking cessation, this would be a regulatory play. Anyways, five to seven years later, we got the regulatory approval and sold the company for, I think, $2.2 billion to Altria. So that was a 30x on my investment.

Sam Parr

Does that mean you turned $2,000,000 into $60?

Scott Galloway

2 and a half into 75? That's insane! I give 25 away though because of my **GIL tax**. So anyways, that hands down, nothing was ever like that in **Total Classic**. A ton of hair on it, almost went to zero. Regulatory play, really unsexy bankruptcy, just all the shit that most people just wouldn't want to get near. It was really, really difficult. Then just all the moons lined up and **Altria** came in and said, "We have to own one of these companies." That's hands down, other than the companies I've started and sold, which is hard work, as you guys know. That shit's hard, that's really hard. That was the best. Let me match it again with another one: **98.6**, this amazing healthcare texting company, preventive care by text message. **Costco**, a big company, signing up for $35 a month. Anyone in the company can text them, dah dah dah. I invested $5,000,000, and it went to zero in eighteen months. I mean, I've never lost that much money that fast.

Sam Parr

Didn't you do something else? Did I hear a story about you doing a bankruptcy thing? Was it with Yellow Pages or White Pages or something like that?

Scott Galloway

Yeah, Dex Media. That's probably not my second best, probably third or fourth. Really great CEO, a guy named Joe Walsh.

Sam Parr

And you're talking about the Yellow Pages, the book?

Scott Galloway

The Yellow Pages, the things dropped on your porch, are an amazing business. It's like $600,000,000 in revenue and $280,000,000 in EBITDA, but it was declining 12% a year.

Sam Parr

It's just advertising.

Scott Galloway

Yeah, the local plumber. There are still a lot of people in rural parts of America that get a phone book. It's almost gone, but the business still exists. It's like AOL dial-up. It's like, "Why would anyone have AOL dial-up?" Well, people still do.

Sam Parr

My mom does.

Scott Galloway

There you go.

Sam Parr

It's just $20 a month.

Scott Galloway

So again, another Jason Madrick investment. I went on the board and I invested, I think, about **$4,000,000**. I really liked that board because I could add a lot of value. I sort of understood the business, and they were trying to transition to become a **CRM** company. The core asset of the company was relationships with tons of small and medium-sized businesses. They started selling them calendaring and clienteling software. Basically, we would go and buy the biggest Yellow Pages company in the South, the biggest Yellow Pages company in Canada, and then the biggest Yellow Pages company in Australia.

Shaan Puri

Are they like franchisees, or is there one company? Is there one Yellow Pages, or how does that work?

Scott Galloway

Big companies... there were one or two companies in Australia that were still in the Yellow Pages business. They traded at two to three times EBITDA because everybody knew they were going away. But you could basically buy these companies, close the headquarters, keep 30% of the best salespeople, and let go of everyone else. As long as you cut costs faster than 12% a year through consolidation, you were cash flow accretive. Every year, the stock price went up. What the management team did, which is just staggeringly impressive, is they were able to transition from a Yellow Pages company to a CRM software company. They actually did it. I think we bought in at around $2.02 or $3 a share, and the stock's now at $15 or $20. I've already sold my stake; I think I four or five X'd there. I didn't 10 X, but again, what is less sexy than Yellow Pages, right? All the stuff I invest in sounds remotely cool. I think this is a lesson for listeners: if you have financial capital, invest in the unsexy stuff. Also, more importantly, your human capital. If you want to be an athlete, a rock star, a musician, an artist, or a model going to restaurants and nightclubs, just be clear: you're going to make a lot less money than someone at that same level of talent in a less romantic industry. If you're just in the top 90% of tax lawyers, you're not in the bottom 10%. Just in the top 90, you can make a good living in tax law. If you're in the top 10% of actors, you make $40,000 or $50,000 a year. The majority of actors don't make a very good living. In fact, 83% of actors don't have health insurance because they made $23,000 last year, and that's members of the SAG-AFTRA union who are the best in the world. If you're in the top 10% of tax law, you fly private and have a much broader selection set of mates than you deserve. So just keep in mind: if you want to do something sexy, fine. You better get a lot of psychic return because the financial returns won't be nearly as great as the person in that "shitty boring" business who's almost as good as you but is going to have a much, much bigger return on their human capital.

Shaan Puri

So, I agree with everything you just said. But at the same time, I have this cocky part of me that's like, "Cool, yeah, but I'll still be in that top 1 or 2%. I'll still get there." I'm just curious, are you wired like that? Knowing, even knowing that, you still play the internet personality game. That's kind of like the Hollywood ratio, not the tax law ratio. You know, you're doing these exotic investments when...

Scott Galloway

mhmm

Shaan Puri

You know, the math would show us that just being a boring indexer and a compounder is going to work better than being a picker. But we do it because we like it. It's fun, it gives us these other returns, and it feels really good to be smart when you get it right. So, even knowing what you know realistically, if you're 28, whether you know that or have heard that, would you do it any differently?

Scott Galloway

Yeah, but just to be blunt, this is a story of privilege. I have access to deals that most people don't. This is also going to sound arrogant, but I have an undergraduate degree in economics. I was a graduate student instructor in macro and microeconomics. I worked in fixed income at Morgan Stanley. I know more than your average bear about the markets, and I get deal flow that people don't get. People will call me and say, "Hi, I'm the CEO of this company, and it's going public. I would like you to be in the IPO."

Sam Parr

When did that happen? I mean, was that happening during the Yellow Pages era? You've been successful for decades, but you've only been popular for what, eight years? Ten years?

Scott Galloway

It's really just happened in the last ten or fifteen years. If I had it to do again, and what I advise young people, unless they have some extraordinary niche knowledge or access to deal flow that other people don't have—which is almost nobody—hands down, going with index funds is the way to go. Not only going with index funds, but make sure you're diversified geographically. My big theme over the last six months, and I've been saying this over and over, is that if you're just in the S&P 500 or in the Nasdaq and you think you're diversified because you're in an index fund, you're not. I believe the U.S. is going to go flat for the next decade. If you look at the P/E ratio of 26 versus Germany at 22, Japan at 18, and China at 14, and you consider the head-up your escholarotic, reckless, ridiculously stupid decisions of this administration and how it's undermining our brand of rule of law and consistency, that is going to result in massive multiple contraction. It doesn't matter how good the company is; if the broader market is registering multiple contraction, you can't outrun it. So, I have been massively transitioning my U.S. holdings into Asian and European markets. Also, the only companies I invest in have at least 50% of their business abroad because I think the U.S. is about to go into a ten or fifteen-year down cycle. But to your question, would I do it again? If I did it again, quite frankly, I would probably just buy residential real estate for rental. To me, that's the most viable option. It's not only a good return, but because our society is rejectionist and wants to make it harder for new entrants, there's been such incredible NIMBYism in America that real estate just gets unnatural lift. So, I think residential real estate over the long term is a solid investment. There are very few investments you can leverage up five to one. There are also very few investments you can depreciate 2 or 3% a year, regardless of whether they're going up in value. From a mental wellness standpoint, I like the idea of being in investments that aren't marked every day. I check my phone way too much—five or six times a day—and I get all bummed out when my covered calls on Oddity would have made me a million bucks more. It ruins my day. Whereas the apartment rental units I own in Delray Beach, I don't know what they're worth today. Maybe they went down 10%, maybe they didn't. But if I had it to do all over again, I probably would have taken all my excess cash flow and done massively diversified ETFs all over the world, and I would have bought more and more residential rental real estate.

Shaan Puri

You said something great that I saw when I was prepping for this. You were talking about checking your phone every day. You're like, "Look, if you're... the stock market's a roller coaster right now, and there's a political circus going on." So, it's easy to feel some type of way. You had a good point. I don't know if you said this off the cuff or if it's something you've really thought about, but you said something along the lines of, "Look, if you got your health, alright, you've already got 51% of the game." If you have your health, let's start with that. Or if you have some friends and family, you're having dinner with people... you know, if you start stacking back up rather than being like, "I'm in a mood swing along with the rolling average of the index," you know what I mean? Can you sort of give your take on that? I paraphrased you.

Scott Galloway

Well, I've been reading some Buddhism recently, and there's one thing I read that really struck me: **the person with good health has thousands of problems, while the person with bad health has one problem.** You guys are younger than me. When I went into my fifties, something happens, and it's really awful. Two or three of your friends die. Just like weird genetic issues pop up. I had a friend who was healthy, ripped, handsome, and happy. Then this weird nerve disorder took him out. Another friend and I were in Tulum, fifty-one, having a great time, living a great life with three kids, killing it professionally. Then he noticed a little bump on his head. "What is that? I don't know, I gotta go check it out." It turned out to be leukemia. They thought they could get rid of it with pharmaceuticals. "I don't need chemo or anything." Oh, it's not going away. "I need chemo." Oh, it's come back stronger. "I have to get a stem cell transplant." They basically gave him a very intense treatment, and then it was like, "Oh, it's back. I'm done." And he's gone. Diagnosis to death in six months. You realize, like, okay, if you're waiting to have washboard abs, if you're waiting to find the perfect spouse, if you're waiting to have more money—don't wait. I mean, really try to take advantage of the moment. Tell people you love them. Be nice to yourself. Be kind to yourself. Enjoy yourself because it's going. I mean, you guys are sort of at the age where time starts to fall off a cliff. But I think a lot about the notion of freedom. I always thought that money would give me the freedom I wanted, and it has given me some freedom from the economic anxiety I've always had. It's given me a lot of options. But what I've figured out as I've gotten older is that true freedom is releasing yourself from the conventions and expectations of broader society around what I should write, what I should say, or how I should present something. I constantly feel a need to add a sentence that waters down my thoughts so that the far right or the far left don't come for me and shame me. I still haven't found the freedom of releasing myself from these conventions and expectations. Now, I still want to be kind because I like that; I want to be a good person. But I still fall into a lack of freedom around it. My goal with my content is to catalyze a productive conversation that shapes better solutions. I might be wrong about the conversation I'm catalyzing or the way I catalyze it, but that's my goal. Yet, I'm still too worried about being shamed, getting it wrong, saying something stupid, disappointing people, or not being liked by strangers. So, I still am not free. I think a lot about what it means, as I barrel towards the end, to have real freedom. Because if you're just focused on getting to a certain...

Scott Galloway

And think that you're going to find the perfect X, Y, or Z? No, you're here to learn. You're here to enjoy yourself. You're here to be as kind as possible. You're here to surround yourself with as many people as possible who love you, unless you love them. But I am trying to get off this hamster wheel of constant ambition and engage in true freedom, and I'm still not there.

Sam Parr

But do things you know... I guess it's a weird situation. You're on both sides of this, and I think I am as well. I act like a tough guy; this thing doesn't bother me. But then, like, I'll see a comment and I'm like, you know, I'll think about it late at night. I'm like, "Oh, fuck! Do I really look puffy in the face?" You have this thing called the Anti-Galloway Index, or is that what it's called?

Shaan Puri

Inverse Galloway, anti-Galloway, something like that.

Scott Galloway

The inverse Galloway index.

Sam Parr

Does that bother you?

Shaan Puri

Insult or sign of respect? How do you take that?

Scott Galloway

Well, no, at the time... well, first off, anyone who takes pictures of a plane doesn't have a plane. Anytime someone's Instagramming you pictures of a Gulfstream, it's not theirs. Anytime anyone says, "I don't care what other people think," it means they're obsessed with what other people think. It's like when people say, "I don't think about money." I hate it when VCs are like, "Oh, I don't think about money." They're fucking obsessed with money. They'd fuck their sister for a nickel. I hate it when people say, "Well, I don't care about money. I just wanted to build great products and everything would work out." Yeah, okay. It's like those douchebags that say they went to school in Cambridge rather than just saying, "No, I went to Harvard." Well, good for you. It means you have rich parents, you shithead.

Scott Galloway

Am I a...?

Scott Galloway

**Little angry today.**

Scott Galloway

Am I...?

Scott Galloway

A little angry today, guys. A little angry... touch angry-ish.

Scott Galloway

When we...

Shaan Puri

Hit the forty-minute mark, you really just like crescendo. It's like Usain Bolt breaking away in the hundred meters.

Scott Galloway

I think.

Sam Parr

Your oddity investment or whatever.

Scott Galloway

It's just the call, man. It's okay. It's okay. It's okay. It's okay. It's okay. It's okay. It's okay.

Scott Galloway

It's okay. It's okay. It's okay. It's okay. It's okay. It's okay. It's okay. It's okay.

Scott Galloway

It's okay.

Scott Galloway

It's okay. Something has really bummed me out, and it's ruined my weekend. I haven't been able to enjoy my kids or whatever. It started online when someone called me "Professor Genocide." I went on *Morning Joe* and talked about my support of Israel and why I think they have a right to defend themselves. You know, I'm very pro-Israel. Then, thousands of comments came in, and people started referring to me offhandedly as "Professor Genocide." It rattles me. There's just no getting away from it. I think some of that is good. I've gotten much better; I don't engage in comments anymore. I read the first ten to get a feel for what people think, and I try to learn from them. But what I found is that most of the really vile content or comments, if you click on them, it's a bot—like "DogFace101" with three followers. So, I try not to take it too seriously. It affects me less than it used to, but it still does affect me. It still has the ability to bum me out. At the same time, you can't be a sociopath. It also makes me really happy. I get a lot of positive feedback, and I try to register that emotion as well. I appreciate that people are nice enough to take the time to say something nice in the comments. I also get a lot of really constructive feedback, you know, like "Your work is really appreciated. I appreciate the effort you went into this. I think you got this wrong, and this is why." I learn from it. I don't mind that. I like that. I like pushback, you know, as long as it's civil and thoughtful. But yeah, the notion that it doesn't get to me? Oh no, it absolutely sometimes gets to me. It just gets to me less now. I am a little less focused on the comments, the sewage system, and also I got off of X, which helps a lot.

Shaan Puri

One of the things I think you're great at is that, like in politics, they have Jon Stewart. He's someone who's both funny and entertaining to listen to, and he speaks truth to power. If he sees something that he thinks is nonsense, he calls it out. There are people like that in the political game. I feel like you do a little bit of that in the business world, whether it's with big tech or other areas. You mentioned that you don't feel totally free to fully express what you feel because you're worried about what other people think. Do you feel like there is anyone who is truly free? Who do you look at and say, "Okay, the way they're doing it is something I admire"? Your role, in some ways, is like that of a takedown artist. Sometimes you call out bullshit; you call out things that are wrong. You want to catalyze that conversation, as you said, and push us in a better direction. So inherently, there's a bit of finding negative things and calling them out or taking down something powerful that's going in the wrong direction. What about the other side? Is there someone you look at and think, "Wow, the way they're living their life is kick-ass," or "The way this industry is going is really great"? What's the positive spin on that?

Scott Galloway

Yeah, there's a lot. I'd say if there's one person who I really admire, it's Sam Harris. I find he's so disciplined, so thoughtful, and good. He's also unafraid. He really thinks through issues; he doesn't say them errantly or flippantly. He does his work, and when he thinks he has moral clarity around something, he's just unafraid and absolutely not hesitant to express it.

Sam Parr

Who else liked that? Who do you admire?

Scott Galloway

Well, I admire them for different reasons. I think Matt Levine at Bloomberg, I just love the way he looks at the markets. I find it so interesting. I think Bill Cohen at Puck has a similar perspective; I like the way he looks at the markets as well. I love Josh Brown and Barry Ritholtz. They're like a couple of Long Island guys talking about investments, you know? I just did a podcast with David Brooks, and I love how he mixes spirituality with comedy, man, and community. He's more conservative, so I learn from him. There are people every day whose work I find really, really inspiring. I wouldn't say I have one specific role model I turn to, but there are so many people out there that I get a lot of inspiration from.

Shaan Puri

You do this sort of advice for young men, like I guess a bucket of content, and I think it's pretty interesting. What's a message that you wish, like if you just picked one message out of that bucket, and you're like, "God, I really wish people actually listened to this one" or internalized this one? What's the one that you really wish you could just, you know, if you could really get it incepted in people's brains? Do you think it would make the biggest difference?

Scott Galloway

So, you're referring to my podcast called *Office Hours*. I found that when I was teaching, you have something called office hours with your professor. People come to your office and they're supposed to ask you questions. They say, "Well, I don't understand the brand core identity for the tech." No one ever came to me to talk about strategy or brand strategy. They came to me to talk about life advice or professional advice.

Sam Parr

Like, uncle... shit.

Scott Galloway

You know what it's based off of? It's based off of the show *Frasier*. The character Frasier had a call-in show. It's basically that people can call in and ask anything about life. For example, "Should I move to Houston? I'm engaged, and I'm worried that my fiancé can't move. I'm worried that our relationship is going to... you know, whatever it might be." Or, "Is it too late to buy Nvidia?" I mean, it's all over the map, and I enjoy giving advice. I think I'm good at it. The one piece of advice I could give to young people is this: **Nothing's ever as good or as bad as it seems.** A lot of your success and a lot of your failure isn't your fault. At the end of your life, and there's research here, when you're on your deathbed, you're not going to take a walk on the beach. You're never going to be with your wife again. You're never going to get to laugh with your kids again. I'm an atheist, and I get a lot of power from my atheism. The things you're going to regret aren't going to be about what happened. What you're going to regret is how upset you were. So recognize that when you get fired, or you have an investment go bad, or you have love that's unrequited or not returned, or you screw up and say something unkind, or professionally you're just not on the right path, keep in mind again: you're going to be upset at how upset you were, not at what happened. On the flip side, also recognize that when something really good happens to you—whether it's good health, or you have an investment that triples, or you get promoted—realize a lot of that isn't your fault. You're never more prone to a really stupid mistake than after a big win because you start believing your own press. So be humble, really be grateful. Realize a lot of it is the fact that you were born in the right place at the right time and were in the right position to do something. Just forgive yourself when things don't go well. Remember, **nothing's ever as good or as bad as it seems.** Try and look in the mirror and say, "If I got fired, I can add value to a company." If someone doesn't return your love, you can look in the mirror and say, "I could make someone very happy." Investments will come and go. I will find good investments if I keep trying. I'm a good person, I work hard, and I will achieve some level of economic security. Because again, it's just not true that nothing's ever as good or as bad as it seems. That's the one piece of advice.

Sam Parr

You're reading Buddhism. You're talking about the end of life. The dog has chilled out. I've listened to you for a decade now, and I enjoy this era of your thinking.

Scott Galloway

The mushrooms.

Sam Parr

It's working. You know, I've heard that you're into that, and it's working.

Shaan Puri

Dude, there's a hilarious joke. You know Hasan Minhaj, the comedian? He had this great joke the other day. He goes, "Your religious preference is directly tied to how well you're doing in life." He's like, "No one loves Buddhism more than a wealthy, wealthy white person." He's like, "Yo, Gwyneth Paltrow loves her some namaste." And then he's like, "That's right, but when you're on rock bottom, welcome to Islam, baby!" He's like, "Mike Tyson, when he's going through it, converts." You know, it's always that guy at rock bottom that finds Islam. He's like, "I could just know exactly what religion you have if I know how well you're doing in life." I know how well you're doing in life if I know your religion.

Scott Galloway

Yeah, I get it.

Sam Parr

I want to ask you, what do you know? I think three years ago, I forget exactly when, you were like, "ChatGPT, it's more like GLP-1s." That's the thing, and you were a bit early on that. But what other company, brand, or movement do you think is quietly crushing it right now that not a lot of people are talking about?

Scott Galloway

Well, wouldn't that be nice if I knew that?

Sam Parr

But that's what you do, right? Every year, in your newsletter, you make some pretty wild predictions. Surely, you have a notes app where you're writing down ideas on what your predictions are going to be at the end of the year.

Scott Galloway

Well, okay, so I said in 2023 the technology of the year was AI. In 2024, I said it was GLP-1. I pick stocks every year; I forgot what I picked over the last few years, but my big tech stock pick for 2024 was Reddit. In 2025, my quote-unquote big trend or big stock pick is really boring. I think the rivers are about to reverse in terms of capital flows. The unprecedented capital flows into the U.S. over the last fifteen years are about to reverse, and we're going to see a massive outflow of capital. It's already happened. I started selling down my U.S. stocks in Q4 of last year. It's been my big theme for 2025. Just regression to the mean is an incredibly powerful force. We have been on an unprecedented tear for about fourteen to fifteen years. Economic cycles usually go about eight years, but we've been on a tear for a good fourteen to fifteen. My big investment theme, if you will, is that you're going to see a massive reallocation of capital out of the U.S. into non-U.S. markets. The market I like the most is Europe because if you ask anyone about Europe, they just roll their eyes and say, "No, they're screwed. It's a museum; it's overregulated." That's when you invest—when something's been left for dead. There are really good companies in Europe trading at single-digit P/Es, and then in the U.S., you have Apple, which is not growing. Apple grew 1% last year, and it's at a P/E of 36, I think, or 34.

Scott Galloway

That.

Scott Galloway

Just... it's trading like a growth stock, and it's not. It's a mature stock. So my big theme is not... I don't know. My technology that I really liked was nuclear, and then I did more research on it. People said, "Nuclear is gonna take five to ten years to come online." It's more LNG, which is liquid natural gas. Then I realized it was over my head talking about energy. So my kind of thing here has been basically that you're about to see an enormous transition, a massive multiple contraction in the U.S. where we go from 26 to the high teens, maybe even lower. You're going to see other markets outperform the U.S. That's my big thing, and that's how I'm reallocating my capital. I'm going to be almost entirely out of the U.S. market within three or four months in terms of public stocks.

Sam Parr

Does that mean you'd be owning... I know you talked about a lot of your public holdings being indexed. Does that mean you'd be owning a global market fund, or would you be owning a European index? What does that mean?

Scott Galloway

No, because it's sort of like what you were saying. I can't resist picking individual stocks. I'm an investor, and this is a very risky one. I invested in a company called Vertical Aerospace, which is a VTOL (Vertical Takeoff and Landing) company. My thesis is that generally, you can have multiple expansions in the UK or in Europe. I think the last mile of transportation is... I'm fascinated with aviation. I think the last mile is the problem to be solved. Helicopters are this dirty, dangerous technology that just shouldn't be around. These VTOLs, basically, I don't know if you've seen these things, but they look like drones. They have vertical takeoff capabilities, and they're electric, so they're really quiet. One can land in your backyard, and you wouldn't even know it's there. And then Archer...

Sam Parr

In America, Archer is one.

Scott Galloway

Of them, Archer and Joby. So, Archer and Joby traded like $4 to $6 billion. This one, again, on the ropes, went in with my same friend. Did a pipe. It's got like, I think, a $200 to $300 million market cap. And also, my real thesis is that my big thesis is I'm trying to get in front of what I think is going to be one of the greatest unexpected increases in capex in modern history. Essentially, the EU has come to the painful conclusion that it can no longer count on its crazy rich uncle for military support or for kind of consistency. So, the EU is talking about taking 1% to 1.9% of GDP allocated to defense and increasing that to 3%. So, with a $19 trillion economy, you're talking about an incremental spend of $200 billion a year on defense spending that no one was expecting even twelve or twenty-four months ago. By the way, defense stocks have already ripped. It might already be too late. The few defense stocks in Europe have already dramatically outperformed. But I think that additional spending is going to be stimulative, and also there'll be some technology spillover, which I think will help the tech sector and inspire sort of an upward spiral in some European stocks. So, I'm an investor in this company called Vertical Aerospace. I'm also an investor in a fund called Atlanta Partners that finds small and mid-cap special situations in Latin America and Europe. I think big-cap growth has taken all the returns for the last decade, and I don't know how long that's going to last, so I try and spread it out. Ray Dalio said something that was really powerful: the key is to try and find twelve positive income streams that are not correlated. If you can do that, you're going to do really well on a risk-adjusted basis. If you can find twelve different stocks or companies with cash flows that are somewhat uncorrelated, that's the goal. Then you get kind of above-market risk-adjusted returns, and that's what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to find either funds or individual companies that are somewhat uncorrelated. The problem is that everything now is somewhat correlated because diversification, that basic theme, caught wind or purchased in the eighties. Every large institutional investor started diversifying like crazy, which means it's impossible to have non-correlated assets now. If an institution is investing in an iron ore manufacturer in Australia and Novo Nordisk, if they get in trouble and need capital, they're going to sell everything. So, basically, we're all kind of interconnected right now. The recognition of diversification has made it more difficult to diversify. But I'm buying both individual stocks and investing with friends and VCs. I'm an investor in two Israeli companies.

Shaan Puri

Have a target rate of return? Are you like, "I want to compound at 15% or 20%?" What do you have? Do you have a target, and do you actually track it for yourself personally?

Scott Galloway

My target is I just want to be a baller.

Sam Parr

Same.

Shaan Puri

What does it take to do that?

Scott Galloway

I don't.

Shaan Puri

How does one... how does one ball?

Scott Galloway

I'm not sure how one ball starts with Scott.

Shaan Puri

Asking that question.

Scott Galloway

Yeah, that's right. That immediately outs me as not a baller. I'm going tonight to some British hotspot or some hotspot in London. The door woman lets me in because I think she thinks I have more money than I have. So, I need to catch up to her expectations.

Shaan Puri

Of me.

Scott Galloway

Of me, I need the perception of me to catch up to the reality of the ask.

Shaan Puri

Her: "How much money do you think that I..."

Scott Galloway

I have so I know.

Shaan Puri

I need a target.

Scott Galloway

Yeah, it's like when a...

Shaan Puri

Need a goose to chase.

Scott Galloway

It's like when a woman returns my eye contact at a bar, I'm like, "She's thinking I'm rich." Anyways, I'm not that thoughtful. What I loosely try to think is that I'm now at the point where I'm not looking to get rich; I'm looking to not get poor. So I don't think of returns. What I think of is that I want to find good investments and good assets. I want to make sure that I always... I do a lot of what they did in Sarbanes-Oxley. I do a lot of stress testing on my portfolio. I'm like, "Okay, what if the Nasdaq got cut in half tomorrow? What would that mean for me? What would happen if there was a real estate crash?" My biggest investment—and we haven't talked about this—my hands-down biggest personal investment theme is that I think income inequality is only going to get worse. I've been saying this for a long time. I think it's terrible, but I think it's only going to get worse. I think the money has totally washed over Washington. We now have a president who's opened a meme coin, which is essentially a Swiss banking account where anyone could put money in.

Shaan Puri

Oh, by the way, congrats on your $500,000 membership you bought to the Trump Friends Club or whatever.

Scott Galloway

Yeah, yeah, the ambassadors. The douchiest douches in Doucheville. For $500,000, I'd pay a lot of money not to be in that. Anyway, by the way, I think those guys...

Shaan Puri

**Sell you that too. He's a genius. I feel like people have...**

Scott Galloway

Been really critical of that. My sense is, write a free assembly; they can do whatever they want. What I think is criminal is having a meme coin that Putin could use. Wouldn't Putin be stupid not to call Trump and say, "I'll put a billion dollars in here, Polston. I have these mathematicians, and I'll take the value—because price discovery's at the margins—I'll take the value of this thing up to $30 billion. You own 80%. I'm going to make you the wealthiest man in the world. And by the way, in unrelated news, could you stop supporting Ukraine?" Wouldn't he be stupid not to make that call? He's losing half a billion.

Sam Parr

What's the Trump?

Scott Galloway

I...

Shaan Puri

It's called.

Scott Galloway

Trump Coin... he has a meme coin.

Sam Parr

Insane! Yeah, what's it at now? What's the market cap of it now? Wasn't it at like $5,000,000,000?

Scott Galloway

It went to 20. Now I think it's at 3 or 4.

Scott Galloway

That's it.

Scott Galloway

By the way, you want to talk about... wait.

Sam Parr

This happened the day before the inauguration.

Scott Galloway

Okay, hold on. You want to talk about grift? They have flooded the zone with so much crazy stuff. You want to talk about grift? They announced the Trump coin on the Friday night before his inauguration, so it would get lost in the news. Thirty people made $800,000,000 over the weekend. I'm going to guess, I'm going to go out on a limb here, that those people probably got a call, maybe from someone close to Trump, saying, "Launching a coin, you should do this." Then, over the course of the next couple of months, I think about 80,000 people lost billions of dollars, i.e., retail investors. Then, as the lockups were coming off, he announced a big dinner to hype the stock. Then he decides, "Oh, you know what? The Department of Justice is investigating scams in the crypto market. We should close that unit down." The grift here, if any Republican ever uses the word "Hunter Biden," it should be noted that what Hunter Biden has been accused of is a parking ticket compared to the double murder of grift this administration is levying against the American public.

Sam Parr

Both could be wrong. Both could.

Scott Galloway

Be wrong.

Sam Parr

Like, both could be wrong. You know what? I cannot stand when people say, "Well, what about this?" It's like, that is also bad. You know what I mean? We can have two conversations.

Scott Galloway

To your point, I almost respect that we Democrats are corrupt for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Speaker Pelosi trades stocks—that's insane! Yeah, she's in a meeting with Health and Human Services, and they say, "Oh, we're going to invest more in payment systems using AI." Then she goes out and buys call options on Tempus AI. When she discloses that she's bought options, the stock surges 30 or 40%. So, Democrats have been corrupt, but we're just corrupt for small amounts. He's corrupt for billions. The damage he does in terms of reducing Americans' confidence in the market is bad. But the ability to say, "Hey, you know, I'm thinking about invading Taiwan. Can you make sure that your attack submarines and your carrier fleets don't show up in the Strait of Taiwan?" And by the way, we're buying a ton of Trump coin, and nobody knows—that's corruption on a different level. Anyways, where I started this rant was that I think income inequality is only getting worse. I think there's a small, what I call, emerging cohort of transnational oligarchs, and that is the...

Scott Galloway

Really, the 1% that has access to influence, deal flow, and corruption gets exponentially richer. Unfortunately, those folks no longer have a vested interest in the health of their host nation because they have their own schools and their own rights. I will always have access to... Mephiston? I never get it right. I will always have access to family. I could be living in the deepest, reddest Mississippi, and if someone in my life needs to terminate a pregnancy, I'd have no problem. If someone comes after my rights, I can lawyer up like no tomorrow. If they start rounding up Jews in the United States the same way they're rounding up people with the wrong tattoo, I can peace out to Dubai or Milan. So, the transnational oligarchs are losing a vested interest in the success of their host countries, democracy, and the rule of law because they have their own rule of law and their own bill of rights. What I see is a group of people who are becoming exponentially wealthier than the rest of the population. I think, okay, that's terrible. I rail against it; I'm trying to work against it. But at the same time, I'm not going to fight city hall. I'm going to try and make money off of it. The way I'm making money off of it is the following: the really wealthy...

Scott Galloway

1% want to live in one of five places. They want to live in Dubai.

Sam Parr

How much is 15%?

Scott Galloway

Anyone... anyone is worth more. I think it's like anyone who's worth more than $50,000,000.

Sam Parr

5.0

Scott Galloway

Okay, so by the way, the number of millionaires in the United States has doubled since 2020. The number of billionaires has gone from 500 to 2,500 in ten years.

Shaan Puri

That is when we started the podcast, so it kind of... but.

Scott Galloway

I'm not even talking about millionaires; I'm talking about billionaires. Billionaires want to live in one of five places: Dubai, London, Palm Beach, Aspen, or New York. That's pretty much it. A few of them are in LA and a few in Hong Kong. My investment strategy is that I own really nice homes in four of those five areas. My view is that in thirty or fifty years, those homes could be worth a lot of money, and they're a great store of value. I can leverage them, which I don't do, but you can borrow against them. Also, there's a psychic benefit. I want to try and figure out an investment strategy that makes it hard for my boys to avoid me. When they're in college, they're going to say, "Well, we can go to Tijuana, or we could go to Aspen and hang out with my dad, but we have to have lunch with him." I'm like, "Well, how fat's the house?" "It's fat." "Alright, we'll have lunch with your dad." I don't know; the biggest assets I have are residential real estate. When I'm not living there, I rent them out. I think income inequality has gone so batshit crazy, not only in the U.S. but around the world. You want to find places where these people want to live. If you're a billionaire, you have a home in one of these places, or you're going to. If you are worth over a hundred million dollars, you're going to have a home in one of these places. They're not making any more beachfront real estate in Palm Beach. Manhattan is constrained, Aspen is almost impossible to develop in, and London is constrained. I think London is a super city and will always have a certain appeal for the wealthy. So, my biggest asset allocation has been in high-end real estate in what I call these super cities—homes of future billionaires.

Sam Parr

Whenever you are in a bad mood, feel free to come on and just rant. I enjoy this.

Scott Galloway

Don't humor me, bitch.

Sam Parr

If you find a new religion that you're into, whatever it is—new atheism...

Scott Galloway

I'm so good at talking about me. How are you guys?

Shaan Puri

I think we both hit a point where we kind of had to make a decision on how much of our future decisions are going to be dictated by money. You know, about 20% of my decisions between the ages of maybe 20 and 32 were dictated by how to be more successful. Then, I sort of realized that I see two groups of people in life. Some people continue to make all their decisions based on money, even though they've already earned the last dollar they'll ever spend. That doesn't seem to make any sense, but I totally get it because they found a game, and they're good at the game. The game is fun, and you get rewarded for that game with a clear, tangible, visible metric. Then there's a smaller group of people who went back and thought of a new game they wanted to play. They went back to the bottom of the mountain. Philosophically, that's my real answer to your question. Yeah, I've got good stuff going on with my kids and their business and all that, but philosophically, that's where I'm at: picking what game I want to play for the next seven to ten years. I don't think it should be the same game I just played for the last fifteen. What was the...

Shaan Puri

Of winning the last 15. If I'm just going to play the same levels again and just keep doing that, even though incrementally it does nothing.

Scott Galloway

That's great self-awareness. I think your decision to be very focused on economic security in your twenties and thirties is absolutely the right choice. It will provide more balance as you get older and more flexibility. You know, they say money is ink in your pen. It allows you to write new chapters and make certain chapters burn brighter. But it's not your story. So fill up that pen while you have the health, the strength, and the lack of dogs and kids. Also, young kids are... I don't know, I think young kids are overrated. I would say I'm contradicting myself, but another piece of advice is to take so many pictures. Take so many pictures because the reason you will get sentimental and appreciate these pictures is that we are a species that values scarcity. We gorge because there's been an absence of fatty, sugary food. We want to play and gamble because there was an absence of free play on the savannah. We engage in porn because there's an absence of mating opportunities. Only 40% of men have reproduced throughout history, whereas 80% of women have. Scarcity makes us miss things and desire them. There's nothing more scarce than your kids. Literally, your kid... I mean, it's like that saying: you never know the last time you're going to pick up your kids. My little boy, who I just went on a college tour with, was literally just crawling into my bed yesterday and saying, "Let's make a plan." He used to go apeshit crazy, so excited when the new episode of "Mandalorian" came on, running around the house or jumping into the pool after my dog. Those moments are going to make you so sentimental. The thing that kind of fills that hole of sadness is that I do those Apple memories every day.

Sam Parr

Hmm, yeah.

Scott Galloway

And you just cannot take enough pictures. It sounds like you're more soulful than I was at your age. Try to take time with your partner to just stop and kind of bask in those moments. I think it was Gloria Vanderbilt who said the happiest she ever was, was when she had young kids at home. Looking back on it, I do believe that will be the moment I say, "That was the happiest I've ever been." So, I think you're thinking about it.

Shaan Puri

Why don't you say young kids are overrated?

Scott Galloway

I think babies are hard. I should've said, I think babies are tough. Yeah, I think from zero to three, dads pretend to like it. I think most dads don't.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I openly dislike 18. And then after that, that's stuff.

Scott Galloway

That's probably bad...

Shaan Puri

I'm sorry, but it seems there was an error in my previous response. Here is the cleaned transcription: And after that, I love it.

Scott Galloway

And then three to five is, you know, when our guests start getting fun. Then, like five to fifteen is just the golden decade.

Sam Parr

I'm shocked at how soft it's made me. I cry pretty easily when thinking about certain things with my children.

Scott Galloway

That's nice, dude.

Shaan Puri

Have you seen the movie *Wonder*? I watched it recently.

Scott Galloway

Oh gosh, dude, have...

Sam Parr

A name.

Scott Galloway

Wonder will destroy you. That's a wonderful one if you just had a...

Shaan Puri

Kid wonder will destroy you.

Scott Galloway

**Episode of Modern Family**: I cry every other episode of Modern Family.

Sam Parr

Like, it's... or I'll look at, I get when I get the thing on my phone, or like "one year ago today," and I'm looking. My daughter is 18 now, and I'm like, "Oh my God!" I get my notification, and I'm like, "Oh wow, she's grown a lot."

Shaan Puri

I actually have a prediction on this. You know how meditation went from being fringe to en vogue? And then, you know, cold plunging... We do all these things to change our state, to change the way we feel. The reality is, you're not cold plunging because you think it's going to add a year to your life when you're 89 years old. It's not a longevity thing; it's a feeling thing and a brag on social media thing. So, I think that there's going to be another one of these. It's a technique that I actually learned at a Tony Robbins event. Tony said that he does this thing with his wife once a month.

Scott Galloway

That's literally the weakest flex in the world.

Scott Galloway

It's not that I learned.

Scott Galloway

This in.

Shaan Puri

A Tony Robbins event that...

Scott Galloway

You should keep that to yourself. Well, what's he gonna say? I've... yeah, you've got... I learned this. I learned this.

Shaan Puri

I learned this from my friend Anthony.

Scott Galloway

Say you learned it on a silent retreat.

Shaan Puri

Or something he does as a regular practice. So, basically, he and his wife sit down and put their camera roll on the TV. He calls it "emotional flooding." Basically, you just kind of wash yourself in these best memories—the best photos, the best videos. It keeps you, like, I don't know, bonded and happy. It's such a simple thing; it's way easier than meditation, and I feel way better afterwards. It's just been very healthy, especially for me and my wife. We have three kids under five, so it's really easy for us to go five days without even talking. The only talking we do is functional.

Scott Galloway

You have three under five? Yeah, oh, you're in Vietnam right now. That's hand-to-hand combat.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, so this is what's keeping us alive. You know, like I'm sure the guys in the bunkers had things that they did to feel good too. This is why.

Sam Parr

Just calling her, like your roommate. My roommate and I gotta go.

Scott Galloway

Handle these kids. But just to end on a sour note, because I'm, you know, glass half empty... stay on.

Scott Galloway

Branch, yeah, you're right.

Shaan Puri

Well, you... the three of us almost outed you as like a happy, good dude.

Scott Galloway

What the three of us are experiencing is not a foregone conclusion for the majority of young people, I think, in America today. It's like the future prosperity is here; it's just not evenly distributed. I think for the majority of young people, it's not within their reach right now to think about finding a mate and having children. When you think about it, it really is, I think, the great tragedy of America. Despite the Nasdaq going up, despite the incredible prosperity, and despite our ability to capture these amazing technologies and create unbelievable shareholder growth, 60% of 30-year-olds used to have a child in their household forty years ago. Now, it's only 27%.

Sam Parr

Well, you said some crazy stats about Logan. Logan's a good friend of mine; I love Logan. You said something—was it something like, if you're above 35 and you're a man, and you aren't in a relationship, the likelihood that you're going to have children is only 20%? Or it was like some phenomenal stats where it was just like, basically, the men who are having sex who are single now are the ones who are getting all of the sex. And the men who aren't in their twenties, like, they have no hope. Something ridiculous like that—that's the story.

Scott Galloway

Well, I think the stat you're referring to has a couple of scary points. One is that if a man hasn't cohabitated or been married by the time he's 30, there's a one in three chance he's going to have a substance abuse problem. Loneliness really does take a bigger toll on men than it does on women. Women will transition a lot of that romantic energy into friendships and professional work, whereas men don't. They rechannel that energy into a lot of negative things. The scariest stat I've seen is that in America, 51% of men aged 18 to 24 have never asked a woman out in person. So, if you're a dude listening to this podcast and you think, "I want to level up in terms of my success romantically," if you have ever asked a woman out, I'm not saying you have to be successful—she might have said no, and that's fine—but if you have ever asked a woman out in person, you're already in the top half of young men in terms of risk aggressiveness and your willingness to try and express romantic interest while making someone feel safe. Young men are basically sequestering from society, or a lot of them are, unfortunately. The economic situation, the fact that older people have figured out a way to vote themselves more money, and the fact that corruption is now gone on full tilt, means that a smaller number of people are aggregating all the spoils. This results in a lot of young people no longer having viable options to find a mate and, should they find a mate, having the economic viability to have a kid and experience what the three of us are experiencing. In my view, the unifying theory of everything should be that politics should focus on a series of programs that help anyone under the age of 41 meet people in more third places.

Sam Parr

They need their version of the game. When Sean and I were 14, the book "The Game" came out, and like every 14-year-old, we read this book. It was about pickup artists, and it took a whole bunch of internet nerds like us. God.

Shaan Puri

Have you ever read this book?

Scott Galloway

The game, I know it, but I haven't read it.

Shaan Puri

Neil Strauss

Scott Galloway

You would appreciate it just from...

Sam Parr

From a writing perspective, it was awesome. It was fantastic.

Shaan Puri

To be clear, just for the pros: my girlfriend in high school, we were going to colleges in two different states, and her parting gift to me was she gave me the book *The Game*. It was the greatest gift and the greatest insult I had ever received in my life up until that point. It was amazing.

Scott Galloway

Yeah, I know a lot. I imagine a lot of young men listen to this podcast. Your goal is to get to know... what do I mean by that? Send your LinkedIn profile or emails to jobs you're not qualified for. Find friends you're interested in hanging out with and try to hang out with them. Put yourself in the agency of strangers and absolutely develop some game. Create a plan such that you're confident enough to go up to strange people, whether they are the same sex or the opposite sex, and express romantic interest while making them feel safe. The only way you get to great "yeses" is through a lot of "noes," so start working on the "noes."

Shaan Puri

And by the way, if you don't know what to say, the Little Dicky pickup line is great. He just goes up to a woman and says, "Excuse me, what's your availability right now as far as being hit on?" It's the most polite pickup line that'll make her laugh.

Scott Galloway

I got a better one. You approach him with a camera and you say, "Will you take a picture of me?" Everyone always says yes. If you say, "Will you take a picture of me?" like you're a tourist or something, they go, "Okay." Now, can you flip the camera around and take one of both of us? She'll go, "Well, why?" And you say, "Because someday I'm gonna show it to our kids." Oh!

Sam Parr

Scott Galloway, thank you very much, man. You're the best.

Scott Galloway

Thank you, guys. Congrats on everything!