Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHpZEMesriU
if you could do something that would make you less depressed to be successful wouldn't you want to take that drug every day you got to tell me what it is so it is Scott Galloway he's a public speaker and author marketing professor at NYU is a business World rock star I'm not done yet the number of kids who see their friends every day has been cut in half in the last 10 years the knock on effect here is that we're producing too many of what is the most dangerous person in the world and that is a young brok and alone man they get this illusion that they have worth when they say angry misogynistic content on social media they become just really shitty citizens Andrew Tes a self-described misogynist if a woman is going out with a man she belongs to that man is Andrew Tate's message a symptom of what you've described 100% they're out of [ __ ] control how would we go about solving this problem so life gets very hard very fast 25 to 45 and generally speaking these are the least happy years and then something wonderful happens you find joy in the mundane as you get older and you get happier so I think it's helpful just to know that when you say something stupid at a party when you say something unkind and you're just beating yourself up you need to forgive yourself and you need to realize what feels important in the moment isn't that important happiness waits for you what are you still working on I'm trying to slow time down time is falling off a cliff for me but how does one practically slow time down so that 30 years doesn't fly past I find that you can slow time down by before this episode begins I just want to say a huge thank you to all of our new subscribers 74% of you that watch this channel didn't subscribed before and we're now down to about 71% so that helps us in a number of ways that are quite hard to explain but simply the bigger the channel gets the bigger the guests get so if you haven't yet subscribed to the DI of a CEO if I could have any favors from you if you've ever watched the show and enjoyed it it's just to please hit the Subscribe button without further Ado I'm Steven Bartlett and this is the dire of a CEO I hope nobody's listening but if you are then please keep this to [Music]
yourself Scott give me your context what is the necessary context that I'd have to understand about you and your earliest years to make sense of the person that you went on to be in your life wow that's a thoughtful question um raised by a single immigrant mother lived and died a secretary uh lot of my life you know I think the most important thing in anyone's life is to have someone who's rationally passionate about your wellbeing and I had that and the second thing is I was born in California in the 60s a white heterosexual male which was like hitting hitting a lottery uh I got access to amazing free education I went to UCLA and Berkeley for graduate and undergraduate degrees total tuition $77,000 and Not only was it accessible financially it was accessible period the admissions rate at UCLA when I applied was 76% it's now 6% and I mention my uh sexuality because my freshman roommate in college was born a white homosexual male and was dead of AIDS at the age of 33 so you know a lot of My Success whether it was free education coming of age during the internet age which was incredible wind in your economic sales you know a lot of My Success is not my fault so the two things that I try and remember to Define my start and it was an amazing start were one uh you know someone who was irrationally passionate about my well-being and uh being born in America and just being exceptionally fortunate you mentioned your mother there what about your father my dad uh you know not a bad man he left us for lack of a better term when I was eight you know it was the 70s he started his third marriage while he was still married my mom uh neither my parents very sophisticated uh uh they were both pulled out of school at the age of 13 my dad was a handsome Scott living in La which means he not only thought with his dick he could listen to it and uh so he you know just really enjoyed himself for lack of a better term which didn't foot well to uh you know a family life uh so he wasn't very involved in my life growing up but I feel compelled to say now that he's 92 every person's obligation from a
species level is to be a better father or mother than their father or mother was to them and he was definitely that he was he grew up in terrible circumstances and he always tried to do the right thing but it was you know it was me and my mom was it happy childhood in your view it was entirely see you were talking a little bit about your childhood it was entirely unremarkable I feel like on a scale of 10 100 100 being the best childhood in the world one being the worst in America at least I was like a 50 it wasn't bad you know we didn't have any we didn't have we were upper lower middle class but it wasn't a Saab story in America in the 70s you could make you you could survive on a secretary salary we took vacations I didn't go to good schools but they were bad schools I had friends but not a lot of friends you know my high school reunion was recently no one would remember me my my childhood was remarkably unremarkable it wasn't bad it's not a sop story but it wasn't what I would call great with a lot of support and a lot of accouterments but again the context of it is being at the median in California in the 70s was like hitting the lottery it was the highest median in the world what was your relationship like with money cuz I I remember reading that that was um quite your relationship with money and your your family's relationship with money was quite formative uh money very early had a big impact on me because because you know people say oh at the time having a divorced mom felt like a little bit of a not a Scarlet Letter but you were the kid who lived with his mother but the thing that was harder was we didn't have any money I mean we weren't poor but you know you apply to college and if you didn't get into UCLA which I didn't get in there were no options we didn't have the confidence or the contacts or the money to apply for me to apply to college outside of school it was stressful and but it was also in some ways very motivating my mom got sick when I was a young adult and I me being the only child and some of those you know instincts that a son feels for his mother take over and when my mom got sick I decided all right I I I remember coming home one weekend she was very ill and I remember thinking kind of like I'm not doing my job as a man because I
don't have the money to take care of her and that was really emasculating and that's when I kind of got my [ __ ] together I remember the moment it was when I was in graduate school I was 26 and look I I decided very early and people I think people who have achieved some level of wealth aren't entirely forthcoming or honest I think about money a lot I was very focused on it um I decided very early that I was going to have Economic Security I did nothing but pretty much work for 20 years I don't remember much else but work it cost me my hair it cost me my first marriage and it was worth it is there a risk in that that when we become so orientated by money yep we I've said this I've had this conversation with if you guess about are we really driven or are we being dragged and and how do we make sure we're not being dragged so we can be intentional about living lives in line with our values yeah I'm not I'm not proposing this is what the world should be I'm proposing what it is in a capitalist society and that is I think America I just moved here so I don't know if society's different here I have noticed here that people ask you where you're from in America they ask you what you do but America becomes more like itself every day and that it is a it is a kind generous place if you have money it's a rapacious violent place if you don't have money and I figured that out very very soon the way I saw it was that poor people having an entirely different experience with us Health Care system than rich people um I just saw it as if I want to have a life of opportunity of prosperity selection set of mates even love to be to be wealthy in America is to be loved people find you interesting they want to know you you have a broader selection set of mates it is the idolatry of the dollar and the impact that wealth has on your life in America is unfortunate and 100% true and it gets more true every day and one of the things I coach young people around is you just have to figure out a way to become economically viable I'm not saying you need to do what I did and work all the time and be very kind of have a monocular focus on money which I did I think there's a lot of people who decide they're not going to live to work
they're going to work to live and they move to a lower cost region they live within their means and they have really good lives I think that's a nice way to live your life the majority of young people I'm around by virtue of the fact I teach at a business school expect to not only be in the top 10% they expect to be in the top 1% economically and so what I encourage young people to do is have a sober conversation what do you where do you expect to be economically and the majority of young people you talk to expect to be in the top 1% and I don't know anyone who's gotten there who didn't inherent money who didn't sacrifice a lot you know what I tell young people is you can't have it all you just can't have it all at once and I think in this competitive environment to be great at anything uh you not only need talent you not only need luck you just need a tremendous amount of grit and a tremendous commitment there are some people who are so talented that they can have balance in their lives at a young age and get Economic Security I think you should assume you're not one of those people and assume that like most of us who have achieved some level of Economic Security it's required a significant tradeoff it came at a cost it came at a cost of relationships it came at a cost of stress I mean it takes a toll but the reason I have balance in my life right now I have a lot of balance in my life right now is because I didn't have very much when I was your age when I was young I mean you're an entrepreneur it's hard to phone it in as an entrepreneur it just requires a level of people think we're just so we're extraordinarily talented that we're just blessed with some special skill I would argue that you're you have more of a risk appetite you're willing to endure public failure because there's no blaming anyone else when your business you know crashes it's very public failure and also more than anything you have a natural instinct to be thinking about the business all the time and working at it most of the time that's you know there there's a relationship between intelligence and success but it tops out at about 110 120 IQ it's better to be smart you're more likely to be successful if you're smart but the
difference between being smart and being genius has no correlation between success that's where grit and perseverance and resilience take over I want to continue that thread but on one of the things you said at the start of this conversation was about your mother's she got sick mhm I read that she you remember the day when you realized that she was depressed yep how did that shape your views on happiness and fulfillment and depression and how we how we ultimately end up in a situation where we're suffering with depression did did was that at all did that influence your view on happiness watching your mother be become depressed yeah my mom was sincerely depr severely depressed but I remember um and that's one of the wonderful things about our a liberal arts uh education I took psychology and they started talking about clinical depression what it meant and I realized that's what my mom was suffering from and depression is sort of the cancer of Our Generation and that is it used to be CLA posited now people are openly talking about it and it's really helpful because I wish I'd known what my mom was going through earlier because you immediately you know we're a narcissistic species you immedately think it's something you've done it's not about you usually it's about them and also life isn't about what happens to you it's about how you respond to what happens to you and I think it's very helpful when you recognize depression and understand it and recognizeing other people because what you then realize is that when you're feeling really down a lot of times it's not your fault you may have stantial reason to be depressed but you may not a lot of it is about your Chemistry that day and also to recognize that this twoo shall pass that nothing a a say that's been really important to me and it's one of the few says that's always kind of held its water for me is nothing is ever as good or as bad as it seems when you feel like you're killing it when you feel like you're in top of the world that's absolutely the time to bring in your horns and be humble and grateful and realize a lot of your success isn't your fault you just got lucky and at the same time when you're upset when you're angry at yourself when you're depressed
when you feel like everything's just black it's not that's that's temporary and you it's comforting to know that that will pass understanding that what my mom was going through was external that it wasn't because things are so bad for us or so bad for her that this was a chemical thing this was like catching a cold that was really liberating and helpful not only to manage the situation in our household but to recognize when I was down and also to recognize that I was probably going to be more prone are vulnerable to that type of depression um but just being aware of these things you know you're a young man when I was a kid we didn't talk about depression we used to call it a nervous breakdown and it was a sign of weakness and it only happened to women right they were the weaker gender and they had something called a nervous breakdown that was what mental health that's what Depression was called back then and then slowly but surely people started to acknowledge that it was a thing that it was no different than any other type of illness that it was treatable and that it wasn't a sign of Shame so it was really helpful for me it was it was uh um you know liberating to kind of understand it and realize that it wasn't totally a function of our situation or an indication of how good or bad things were at the time one of the things you talk about in your new book a drift um is this decay of community in our lives yeah and Community seems like such a human thing yeah so I I when I read that I thought maybe that's in part part of the part of the cause or factor of why we're seeing a lot of um unhappiness depression and these things what's your what's your take on that 100% um do you have dogs I you have kids I do have have a dog upstairs so look dogs just want to be around other beings and mammals are a social we're very social we you know from a young age we suckle we're we just want to my dogs lie on top of each other I mean we're meant to be around each other and whether it's in the US enrollment and Boy and Girl Scouts is off by like 40% Church attendance is way down the the percentage of people who speak to their neighbors is off like 40% if you just think about covid we don't go to the mall we don't go to the movie theaters right we're becoming more and more segregated by income class the
number of kids who see their friends every day has been cut in half in the last 10 years so we're just not touching smelling and feeling each other nearly as much and I think that's directly correlated to happiness my youngest really struggled with covid and we always said well it's because he's not in school because the schools were closed for a while and I thought more than school what my kid needs is other kids and that is you know the you need guard rails you need people around you I think of those Japanese soldiers who retreated into the hills of the Philippines with orders to not give up the island you know when the Japanese rried from the Philippine islands in the South Pacific they left behind some of these uh soldiers some of them were there for 20 or 30 years and they refused to give up their commission until they would have to find the the commanding officer take them to the island and tell them come down the war's been over for 25 years these individuals accomplish nothing they didn't grow spiritually phys physically they didn't learn anything they had nothing to share with anyone after their 25 years years so being alone is one of the worst things on an extended basis that can happen to a human and every day one of the worst things that can happen to a human is happening more and more to all of us in Western society and it's especially prevalent among kids the lack of socialization and then this kind of hyper socialization that takes place on their phone which is really brutal and has huge externalities is I think one of the biggest uh causes for the massive uptick and depression among young people so again I like to coach younger people and might put yourself in a position where you have to be around other people every day building something in the agency of something else whether it's a job whether it's a nonprofit whether it's Church whether it's a sports League be in the agency of others building something bigger than all of you and it's a great way to make friends mentors it's a great way to learn how to read the room I joined a fraternity when I went to UCLA when I was 17 and people make a cartoon of fraternity like we're all these terrible
people it was the best thing I could have done I had no male role models until the age of 17 my dad wasn't around I didn't have many friends so being in a place that shrunk a 30,000 person campus down to a smaller thing I wouldn't have graduated and it was hard for me these my quote unquote forat brothers gave me a hard time but it was really good for me you know you you you you get in better shape I I remember I remember my roommates telling me to stop smoking so much pot and go to class more I mean you have people watching you 24 by7 I needed that socialization uh so I think one of the worst things that can happen to a young adult is for them to be isolated and we're increasingly isolated are you optimistic about that that changing because the direction of travel is in one is in One Direction and then when you hear things about metaverses I'm not I think we have this nihilistic I think technology is nihilistic I think the most successful person in the world at least monetarily want wants to figure out a way to inhabit another planet rather than Focus his genius and his resources on making this planet more habitable and I find that nihilistic and uh people I I just find it strange that the most talented wealthiest people in the world want to get us off the planet so and then you think about social media just the trends among young people there's an uptick and travel but that's pent up Demand by uh a class of people who have the money to travel our socialization appears to have taken a dramatic step change structural step change down and I even see to my kids they are thinking about getting home to their phones and they're social on their phones but it's not a replacement for for personto person contact um you know there's some good things to it uh teen drunk driving accidents are down teen pregnancy is way down but the number of kids socializing is way off I find it I think it's a I think it's a terrible thing and I don't see there'll be some uptick because CO's over but it feels like there's been a structural step change down because people now want the dopa they get trading on Robin Hood watching porn watching Netflix uh getting some sort of socialization or need for affirmation by the number of likes they get on Twitter
rather than leaving their house to get that same type of dopa hit the number of people playing in organized Sports is way down so I'm not I think it's I think it's a real problem and I don't see it unless there's EX unless there's recognition of it an external investment whether it's youth clubs whether it's after school programs whether it's some sort of conscription or national service which I'm a big fan of I don't see structured means for people young people to serve in the agency of something bigger than themselves do you think there's a decline decline in grit amongst young people that this genz generation in the in the Western World when you think about your kids and the and the grit they'll have you talked about how important grit is to to achieving economic viability um I was talking to Simon cnic about this a couple of weeks ago on this podcast about whether genz are less res resilient and hardworking than Generations that have come before them because of the influences I remember I opened up Tik Tok the other day and it's like it's showing I don't know whether this was just the Tik Tok I saw I remember one going viral on Twitter a couple of weeks ago from San Francisco showing the day in the the life of um a jenzi working in in Tech and it's like wake up go get the frapper Cher latte whatever take the dog for a while pottery class 5 minutes on the laptop pottery class yeah yoga um I worry about this a lot with my kids because generally speaking what happens is the children of I I would say if I had what my kids have I wouldn't have what I have because I wasn't that motivated if I'd grown up in the household I'm grow my kids are growing up now the only two things I know I would have had in my life as a young man or a Range Rover in a cocaine habit I just wasn't an absence of money really motivated me and my kids don't have that my kids have access to everything they need and so trying to figure out a way to instill Grid in your kids whether it's chores or some level of discipline I it's my I think it's my biggest challenge as or our biggest challenge as parents uh um but in terms of the I work with and granted it's selection B I work the kids I work with I can't get over how extraordinarily
talented they are um so the meme of quiet quitting and again it may be proximity bias because of the kids I draw or I I know in my firm but I find that every year and I teach between three and 500 kids a year in NYU every year I find that the kids the young adults are more talented and harder working and more socially conscious sure they're a little expectant some of it I roll my eyes you know occasionally I'll say someone say you know I I need to leave and go to to pilates class and I kind of laugh like I can't even imagine saying that to my boss uh when I started out but in general I find they're just remarkable um and again it might be because the kids I've been able to attract but I don't buy this notion that they're somehow entitled I don't I haven't seen that when you when you're teaching these young people about and preparing them mentally and with skills for the the world that's to come MH what is a key indicator that that young person become a successful adult professional entrepreneur business owner yeah I can't speak to entrepreneur we're very data driven so I ran I started ran a company called L2 which was a business intelligence firm we grew it to about 120 people and we sold it and we we were very data driven and we used to you know evaluate everybody every year and then we would try and look for um correlations and while it's dangerous to do and no one wrote it down the correlations we found that were the best predictors of success at our firm were few things one they went to a grade school which you don't like to say but most of our kids who are really really strong had gone to what you would consider Elite universities uh two they were athletes we found that um a background in sports especially individual sports where it was gymnastics or diving uh that these people just brought a certain level of discipline and grit that some of the others didn't have and the third is female uh they because we had such a young firm uh a disproportionate amount of our really successful people were women and there's a lot of studies showing now that women just mature at an earlier age the net of it for us was and you were scared to write it down and I've sold the firm so
I can say it now if a woman from the El gymnastics team showed up it was an automatic higher and I don't think that's anything unusual the uh that groundbreaking the you know I graduate from UCLA with a 2.27 GPA I don't know if you have grades the value but basically I barely graduated and I got a job at Morgan Stanley right out of UCLA which was considered a pretty prestigious firm and it's because the guy who ran the department had rode crew and I was an orsman at UCLA and he said anyone who Rose crew gets an automatic hire because you're willing to kill yourself you can push yourself harder than anyone uh so a lot of these firms recognize that sports are a forward looking indicator but some of the other indicators you can't control you know getting into an elite University now is a function of being the the son or of someone rich or being freakishly remarkable kind of two cohorts and then obviously you can't control your sex but I have several women in their early 20s working for me who could be the junior Senator could be the next ambassador to France and you know a lot of the young men have a lot of potential but you can just see they just don't mature as fast NYU what else are you teaching these kids I call them kids that my age but yeah I I well I mean it's mostly principles of brand strategy and digital Market marketing but I have a course uh I have a session the the most popular session is on I call the algebra of happiness and I just go through sort of basic best practices for success and we've talked about some of them realizing balance I think is a myth I think the most important decision you'll make in your 20s and 30s you know I survey the class what's the most important decision you'll make and they usually say the industry you'll go into where you decide to live the most important decision you'll make is who you decide to partner with specifically have kids because you're in that person's life for 20 years and I have a lot of friends who are successful in most exterior metrics but don't have a real partner in their spouse and they have what I would call a life full of stress and disappointment on a regular basis whereas I have friends who on an external basis may not look as
successful but they have a real partner and everything just burns brighter for them so the most important decision you'll make is is who you're fortunate or not fortunate enough to partner with and so what I suggest is that be as aggressive as possible about creating as many opportunities for Serendipity and contact with people that your your ability to punch above your weight class and find someone of Great Character that you're attracted to that you fit with is a function of liquidity and that is always accept invitations to dinner parties uh I think young men should be more aggressive I think young men have been told in this environment that they should uh be very careful about who they approach and express interest in and I think there is a huge difference between expressing interest in a thoughtful way and harassing someone and if you don't know the difference you've got much bigger problems but I encourage young men to as uh general cogni or behavioral therapy to force themselves when they're in a line of coffee to talk to some the guy or gal in front of them and behind them because if you're interested in someone there's nothing wrong with asking them out to Coffee there's nothing wrong with expressing interest and I see a lot of young men are not creating that types of opportunities to meet people and eventually find good friends find good mentors and most importantly find a good mate and so unfortunately marriage and relationships are becoming another luxury item marriage and pairing off with a mate is plummeting among people it's it's um correlated to your wealth because middle inome and poor people especially men are no longer are because of online dating are no longer seen as viable mates and they also don't have as many opportunities to meet people in person where things like smell and Vibe and humor that are some of the magic and mystery of why we're attracted to each other but um what I tell them is create as many opportunities as possible to establish relationships uh so it's give up balance but if and when you can invest all of your remaining energy and having as many uh you know random contacts with people as possible and also be aggressive talk to people introduce yourself if you're interested in someone if you want to
establish of friendship if you're interested in someone romantically Express that interest if if they're not interested in you both of you are going to be fine you can handle the rejection or the small rejection they can handle someone expressing interest and I think in our age we've uh in a weird way uh implicitly told young people especially men they're not supposed to express that interest what do you make of dating apps well I think my advice to young people would be to do it all you know it's how people meet it used to be how people made it if you will is that it used to be a third work a third friends and a third school now it's well above 50% online so the majority relationships are beginning online for people your age and it's very efficient but what happens when technology comes into any sector is it consolidates it it becomes the winner take most market so whether it's e-commerce social media search engines once technology comes into it you have one company that owns 50 % of all online retail 2third of all social and 93% of search so technology has come to mating with dating apps and it's created a win or take all or win or take most dynamic which is somewhat unhealthy and it it plays out like something like this women are interested in men based on three criteria the first is their ability to Signal resources the second is intelligence and the third is kindness it doesn't matter how rich or how smart you are if you're an [ __ ] or you're not kind people eventually don't want you as a mate and unfortunately online it's very difficult to Signal two and three so you can signal one and when everyone has access to everyone women who have a much finer filter for mating because the downside of sex is so much greater for them if they get pregnant so they have much finer filter they end up all being drawn or expressing interest to a much smaller group of individuals so what the dynamic is you have 1550 men on Tinder 15 women on Tinder 46 of the women will Express all of their interest to just four men which leaves 46 men buying for the attention of just four women so if you apply the genie coefficient to online dating it's got the same Genie coefficient as income inequality in Venezuela so mating inequality is
greater than income inequality in Venezuela and what it leads to is what I call Porsche polygamy and that is the men who are able who are the top 10% in terms of attractiveness online get 90% of the interest so so that does not lead to good behavior or establishing long-term relationships kind of 50 to 90 percentile do okay but the bottom half of attractiveness of men based on online attractiveness are totally shut out of the market and as a result in America one in three males under the age of 30 has not had sex in the last 12 months and I find people hear the term sex and their mind goes different places I think of it as the key step to an elemental Foundation of any society and that is relationship so in the US what's happened with online dating is it's amazing for the top 10% of attractiveness of men it's okay for the top half it is a disaster for the bottom half and when I say attractiveness I mean by very crude metrics so if you're Tinder profile I went to MIT I just started a KKR and my Rolex accidentally is visible in my profile picture and I'm geolocated living in Manhattan or living in uh Beverly Hills you're going to get a massive amount of attention the bottom half we not able to express anything other than wealth which they may not have are totally shut out on the market and the knock on effect here is that we're producing too many of what is the most dangerous person in the world and that is a young broken alone man uh so the guy who attacks Salon Rashi uh recently in the US that wasn't about the fatwa that was about a young man living in his mother's basement when you hear about Mass Shooters in the US you know who they are before you know who they are so we are producing uh an enormous cohort of economically and emotionally nonviable men and I think it's bad for society I think it creates an existential risk for us I think women as a result don't have as many find there just aren't as many economically or emot or emotionally viable men as they would like women are graduating at Double the rates of college as men now for every one male graduate the next 5 years of college there's going to be two women and you think well okay it's time women it's time women leveled up they're finally getting their due okay but the this has just realized it has huge
societal impacts because women made socioeconomically horizontally and up men horizontally and down in some women with college degrees typically aren't interested in men without college degrees so we're seeing less household formation lower birth rates and these things usually stunt an economy uh so I think it's a big issue uh and again I think it comes down to providing more young more opportunity for young people in general I think if you had sort of gender specific affirmative action towards men it would just become so politicized and heed that it wouldn't be worth it I think you need a massive leveling up of all young people that I think will disproportionately help young men how do we get those bottom 50% of young men laid I think you need to make them first and foremost more economically viable um I think more job opportunities I think it builds confidence I think you need to get them out of the house I think it's vocational programs I think it's opportunities to go to college or get some sort of certification I think it's things as basic as social service or more opportunities for them to get together Community yeah and I think it's a certain amount of Education that uh Embrace some of the things that are wonderful be about being a man being aggressive is fine be physically fit and strong uh I think we're blessed with uh and this is true of men and women I'm a big fan I believe the afford looking indicator of your success is the amount of time you spend sweating versus watching other people sweat any person under the age of 30 man or woman should be able to walk into any room and think of [ __ ] God real I could kill and eat everybody or outrun them one or the other and it's not about being ripped it's not about being skinny it's about being a stronger version of yourself you'll be happier less prone to Depression more attractive to other mates you'll be kinder um because you feel more confident so I think ex real phys embracing physical fitness young people have one thing that's terrible about young people as they've gotten unhealthier consistently the last 50 years um I think social service and I think figuring out institutions and
means whether it's school or social service so they can meet each other develop friendships fall in love have more opportunities um to have not only make relationships but have guard rails young men need guard rails they need a girlfriend a job to tell them no you need to put on a shirt and get to work no you can't get high and drunk every night no if you want to continue to have sex with me you need to get your [ __ ] together I think that's really important for a young man especially young men and young women need it as well but just not as much so I think what you have is a generation of young men that have no motivation no guardrails they get their dopa hit of Addiction on Robin Hood they don't have the Mojo to get out there and meet women as much because they're watching so much porn they get they get this illusion that they have some sort of Worth or affirmation when they say angry things on social media that they get rewarded for they become they start blaming other people specifically they start blaming women and they become much more prone to misogynistic content they start believing in conspiracy theory they're less likely to believe in climate change and some they become just really shitty citizens and we're producing just a massive amount of these individuals and the scary part is we'll just ignore the weirdo and put them in the corner the problem is the government does ignore them because we're very misogynistic when it comes to our elected leaders in the US we've been producing more female college graduates than male college graduates for the last 40 years but still only 28% of our elected representatives are female people societies men and women conflate leadership quality with height and depth of voice so we will always at least in the US for a long time elect more men and who do these men appeal to how do they get elected they appeal to this cohort of conspiracy driven misogynistic anti-government men young men these young men will always have over representation in government which leads to elected leaders saying that they believe the elections are rigged that that Stoke nationalist fears that blame immigrants I mean really really hateful stuff and so not only are these individuals uh dangerous and
unproductive but what's even more unproductive is they will have a disproportionate voice in our politics because the easiest way to get elected is to tap into the tribal instincts or motives of this of this cohort you said misogynistic content there and um one of the things that came to mind when you said that was Andy Tate yeah are you familiar with yeah this person yeah is Andrew Tate's message a symptom of um what you've described 100% you know we live look it's easy to credit your grit and your character for your successes and blame the markets for your failure years and so when you have a young man who is failing he's looking for culprits and then you have someone come along and say it's not your fault and and they start saying that the reason you can't find a date it's women's fault it's their fault it's not yours it's not that you haven't developed the skills or demonstrated the discipline to develop the attributes that others find attractive it's their fault and I think it's very um dangerous and most of it's a Griff the individual you represented claims it's not your fault and but by my 4995 you know learn how to be successful program it really is a grift um and people you know Trump is sort of a a version of that right I mean if you think about what's happening in America the Democratic party is basically becoming the party of educated women and the Republican party is becoming the party of uneducated men so yeah I think uh I think that those types of individuals are perfect examples of trapping of kind of falling into this really ugly you know uh blame others kind of uh uh gestal in our society I think it's very unfortunate I think we also on the I I have no idea what your politics are Steve I consider myself a progressive I think progressives have to take back masculinity and that is we have to Define what masculinity means and show a vision why are all the dudes these conservatives so I mean I'll give you an example I'm profane and vulgar person and on the left they immediately complain conflate I've cursed several times on this show I talk about sex very openly and very crudely that doesn't mean I'm not that doesn't mean I'm not a feminist doesn't
mean I don't have Progressive values so I think the left needs to take back profanity and vulgarity and I think we need to take back masculinity I I see masculinity as a man-made societal construct but to we need to identify it and then ask young men to foot to those skills and I see it as very basic in a very basic way acquiring the skills and strength so you can advocate for and protect others whether it's physical strength mental strength Financial strength kindness intelligence and I think saying okay it's great to be a man express your masculinity and by the way masculinity isn't just a domain of people who are born men women can demonstrate masculine features just as men can Dem demonstrate feminine features but I think the left are progressives need to take back this notion of masculinity and we've sorted we've sort of emasculated on the left men because to be pran to even acknowledge masculinity is somehow to be anti-female on the left and that's not true at all you know who wants more men women or that's what I find so I think that uh key to restoring balance if you will and not having our party split across gender lines and pull this generation of failing young men out of this hole is to redefine masculinity as something more evolved more thoughtful than involves intelligence that involves kindness that involves strength but also on the left to say it's okay to be a man we can acknowledge our differences it's okay to be aggressive you know when when Russians pour over the Border in Ukraine you want some of that big dick energy you know it's there's some features of of distinct to uh uh uh men that is really important in our society and should be celebrated and all of it has been in my opinion not all of it a lot of it has been on the left conflated with toxicity and there's some of those attributes that can lead to terrible Behavior but most of it is a good thing in our society most of it is needed quick one some of you may know we've got a brand new sponsor on this podcast American Express and you've got a brand new exclusive offer for a limited time only which I can't wait to tell you about from the 18th of October to the 16th of November American Express is offering new card members a 60,000 Point
membership reward as a welcome bonus when when you join when you spend a minimum of £8,000 across the first 3 months this is simply a thank you for joining American Express and for those that don't know you can use your American Express business platinum card points in exchange for various rewards such as booking travel holidays gift cards and so much more so essentially you're rewarded with huge prizes for just using their card to spend on your usual purchases and I've had a look through at what 60,000 points can get you so if you'd like to find out how you can get your hands on your new American Express business card than such American Express business platinum card to find out more as you might know crafted are one of the sponsors of this podcast and crafted are a jewelry brand and they make really meaningful pieces of jewelry and this piece by crafted when I put it on for me it represents courage it represents ambition it represents being calm and loving and respectful and nurturing while also being the antithesis of that seemingly the antithesis of that which is um sometimes a little bit aggressive with my goals and determined and courageous and brave the really wonderful thing about crafted jewelry is it's super affordable it looks amazing the pieces hold tremendous meaning and they are really well made there was a big smile on the front of your book yeah part of the reason why you put that what looks like a smiley face on it is because because of this Arc of happiness that you describe yeah that was quite surprising to me what what do you mean by an arc of Happiness well across across almost every culture the correlation between age and happiness is a smile so zero to kind of 25 is beer Star Wars you know making out PR college football or you know Premier League football 0 to 25 is usually pretty happy 25 to 45 is what I call the [ __ ] gets real years you realize that distinct what your parents your uni told you you're not going to have a fragrance named after you or be a member of parliament you have kids you have economic stress someone you love a great deal gets sick and dies your parents right life gets very hard very fast 25 to 45 and generally speaking these are the least happy years and then something wonderful happens usually in your late
40s or early 50s and that is you start recognizing the finite nature of Life maybe you have some economic security maybe you've established relationships maybe you have these really wonderful things that are less awful that look smell and feel like you called kids you realize that life is you start finding appreciate I don't know if you remember this Steve do you remember going out with your parents and your mom and your mom would like a salad would come and she'd stop the table and say look at how beautiful the salad is yeah or just admire the flowers and you think you used to think as a kid like what the [ __ ] like and when you realize it's so weird when you turn into your I stopped outside my house uh there's a garden and I just couldn't stop marveling at the Garden the garden's here I've never seen anything like it we have this Garden across is in the park and I'm like who are the Gnomes that come out at night and manicure this thing so perfectly and I'm not into botney or horiculture and I can't stop marveling I wouldn't have done that in my 27y old self but I do it in my 57 I find you find joy in new things you find joy in the mundane as you get older and you get happier and the happiest generation the happiest age cohort is the cohort that should be the least happy because they're not healthy is old people so what the learning here is that if you wake up at 35 and you have a couple kids and you have a spouse or you have a job you know and you think [ __ ] this is hard I'm not that happy recognize that's part of the journey and just keep on keeping on you know happiness Waits For You in most instances uh so happiness is absolutely a smile and so I think it's helpful just to know that that as you move into your income earning years as you move into your mating and child rearing years and the depth of work and your parents start aging it's stressful and it's hard and if you're unhappy or feel unhappy at times that is normal that's part of the journey and for me it's it was helpful to read that because I'm looking forward to all the happiness that's kind of coming my way and I can feel it as you get older you just start finding joy in weird places when was the the pit of your Ark in your life when was when were your hardest years as it relates to happiness um
well losing my mom was tough for me um but I think the the the pit for me you're an entrepreneur the highs are really high and the lows are really low the closest I can equate it to is is having a business like having a kid you conceive the thing it looks smells and feels like you and when it does well it's just like when your kid scores a goal or is doing great or seems happy there's just no joy like that when something come you have your world to work you have your of friends and you have kids you don't have kids yet have St you'll find this out when something goes wrong with one of your kids the whole universe shrinks to what is wrong with your kid I mean nothing else matters and you just can't sleep you're stressed you're upset you feel failure on a cosmic level because this Instinct that pours over us is if your kid is failing you have failed on a more Cosmic level because you haven't been able to protect that kid it's the same way with a business so when your business fails you just it's impossible to remove your yourself from that failure my lowest moment probably professionally was in the great financial recession of 2008 in 99 I was a young man and was Wealthy on paper I'd started several e-commerce companies I didn't realize most of it was not my fault that it was the market and by the end of 2000 I was broke I lost everything through the dotom crash cloged my way back to some level of Economic Security in 2007 smacked again in 2008 lost almost everything and then my my young son or my oldest had the poor judgment to come marching out of my girlfriend so I was broke and I had a son a newborn and a combination of the disappointment professionally where I was now 40 years old and wasn't economically where I thought it would be was really upsetting and and disappointing and then the stress when you're a dude with no spouse or kids you can kind of dance Between The Raindrops if you need to you can sleep on a couch I was knew I can make a living I could support myself myself but living in New York uh having uh what felt like economic failure business failure and a kid and it's like okay my failures are now this kid's failures that was really stressful uh it was also very motivating you know IID made some money so I had made enough money to live
kind of a a kind of a a fake wealthy life I had nice clothes a nice apartment I could go to St Barts I had just enough money to give the illusion of success but there's no faking it when you have kids this person is dependent upon you I was living in New York it's impossible not to make a good living in New York with kids um and so that was wildly stressful it was like okay this is no longer about me when I fail economically I'm failing as a species I'm failing as a dad uh that was a rough time 2008 2009 was rough but it was also very motivating cuz I got very serious and started working very hard and again I didn't see my kids we had another kid two and a half years later I didn't see much of my kids until the age of five I I you know I try and get home for bath time but I was very focused on getting my household back on economic firm footing again but that was very stressful that's your biggest sort of professional failure what about your biggest personal pit pit um and what did it teach you oh I don't know I I I think are both your parents still alive yeah okay so one of them will get sick and die and that is the heart the two things I found that kind of turn you into an adult are when you lose one of your parents it's just the harshness of it is so Unthinkable as a species we have an inability to wrap our head around death for good reason otherwise we'd all just be freaked out and not willing to take risk and not hunt animals for fear they might kill us not take risk never go outside so we purposely can't understand it we can't imagine it you can't imagine that this person's going to be gone and it is over that is devastating and it it also just brings this harshness of life like really present in front of you but at the same time it creates tremendous perspective that wow the mortality rate's 100% my kids are going to have the same tragedy when I die and I think it I think it can liberate you and realize that said okay if I feel embarrassed if I feel scared about risks if I'm beating myself up over a mistake I made you know what it really doesn't matter that much you should be kinder to yourself you should be more forgiving there's great work by my colleague at NYU Adam alter on paliative carry where
he surveys people who are weeks from the end and they have a lot of regrets they they wish they'd live the life they want to live whether it was being more open about their sexuality being who they wanted to be with going to the career they wanted to go with they were living their lives for other people is a huge regret or Society they wish they'd stayed in better contact with friends but more than anything their number one regret is they wish they'd been less harsh on themselves and that is again life isn't about what happens to you it's how you respond to what happens to you and when someone dies and you realize the finite nature of life and that we all have the same end coming I think it's liberating because what you realiz is when you say something stupid in a board meeting even when you have a business fail when you pick a stock and it gets cut half in two weeks and you're just hating on yourself when you say something stupid at a party when you say something unkind unwittingly and you're just like Jesus what was I think and you're just beating yourself up realize it's the person you're worried about what they think of you your situation it's going to go really fast and it's going to be over and all you're going to have is the people that miss you so you don't you need to forgive yourself and you need to realize what feels important in the moment isn't that important and I found it very liberating I was devastated losing a parent and was really my only parent but at the same time it just gave me a lot of perspective and then I think the second moment in your life you start to grow up is when you have a kid because up until that moment and I'm naturally a selfish person it comes it comes very easily to me but it's the first time in your life you're more concerned with someone else's well-being and it's it's it's a strange sense to want someone else to be more concerned about someone else's wellbeing than yours I mean truly more concerned and it's somewhat liberating when I was your age on Friday I'd start getting stressed like what fabulous people am I hanging out with what amazing thing am I doing how can I hang around more interesting and hotter people how can I have better experiences sex more sex with hotter people make more money make
more money now it's like okay we got soccer practice Saturday morning we got a play dates out it's all of a sudden just about them I mean it's literally just about them and for the first few few years that takes some adapting but what you find I find it's relaxing now to be more focused on someone else I find is is is relaxing and rewarding instead of just all you all the time right so losing someone and gaining someone I think are the kind of key moments where you sort of uh grow up I mean losing your parent is something that happens to everybody some the economic strain I have most people would pray for but personal troughs uh I've been really blessed so far you talked a little bit there about self-doubt yeah um do you do you struggle with self-doubt oh yeah I have a huge impostor syndrome but I think it's healthy and I think most people have it I think um yeah I I sure uh every time I've raised money I've thought I was fooling them committing fraud like oh God I just raised $37 million from my edtech startup what were they thinking you know what were they thinking um I don't you know I weird things like uh I I get I'm sure you get fan mail or uh if people who listen my podcast or want to meet me or have dinner with me I don't like to do it because I always find they're going to be disappointed that the person they think I am I'm just not that interesting or that cool um I I always worry that at the end of the day my natural state will be to be broken alone that that's kind of like what my personality traits were they'll lead me um I have those fears every day I have huge impostor syndrome um yeah so but again it it's motivating it's like well okay prove yourself and them wrong so I I wouldn't describe myself I'm not a I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm confident on certain levels but I always feel like a little bit like every time I have an achievement I've like kind of fooled everybody do you know where that comes from because I I I'm not sure if that's everybody I sit here with a lot of people so I see a variance yeah I don't know yeah I really don't know I don't know where um I don't know where it comes from but yeah I definitely have something whispering in my ear like yeah who the [ __ ] are you kidding like yeah
that you you temp you fooled them temporarily but it's all going to come crashing down yeah I have that when I was reading through a lot of things you'd said about yourself you you also had called yourself an [ __ ] a few times mhm what do you mean by that and why were you an [ __ ] uh yeah simp someone who wasn't kind someone who put their own needs ahead of other people I wasn't very kind to my first wife I should have been as an early manager I should have been kinder to my employees yeah an [ __ ] why why or how I don't know I I guess because I could or I don't know I like that think that I've gotten better as I've gotten older I think in America there's this um at least and it's changing in the world I grew up when I think it's kind of started with Steve Jobs you know here's a guy who I think there's this unfortunate Gestalt in American Business that if you're talented and super nice you're talented if you're talented and a bit of an [ __ ] you're a genius it was seen as leadership to be in a room and and get angry or point out the problems or dress somebody down I think that's changed for the better in the last 10 years but everybody was trying to be Steve Jobs and there's no getting around it he was cruel at work he denied his own blood under oath to avoid child support payments while it was worth a quarter of a billion dollars and that's the Jesus Christ of our information age economy this was not a kind man and so in the Tech Community in the 90s it was uh kind of rewarded to be you know you were a fighter right to be harsh and I think a lot of that has changed for the better you realize and I just as you get older you're just younger you're selfish and I think I've gotten some early success so I I don't think I realize the extent to which luck played a role in that but I've gotten better um I'm you know less of an [ __ ] what has allowed you to increase your self-awareness you just get older you just get you know you just get older you realize I remember I had one moment and it I was at a I was in a meeting I run my own companies yeah before I joined NYU and I remember like
just nothing that big a deal but this guy was presenting and he was had some slides and I'm like I'm might go back I'm like your slides make no [ __ ] sense I'm like just don't don't get us all in a room and present this garbage garbage just kind of set it like that those exact words and he finished the presentation and then we're all you know afterwards and I went to the men's room and he was in the men's room and he was next to me at the Ural urinal and I saw his hand shaking he was so rattled by the thing that he had like a small py or whatever you call it and I remember thinking you know I was finally getting to an age where I could start to be a little bit more self-aware and kind of like what's the point of all this [ __ ] success if you just make other people feel like [ __ ] like what's the a point and I thought why did I do that and some of it was to communicate that this was unacceptable and it was the data that this person was presenting was unacceptable but it would have been just but part of it was for me to take the opportunity to elevate my own stature by diminishing someone else's and that's entirely wrong and what you realize as you get older is that you don't need to diminish other people's status to get to the same point I should have taken him aside and said come on man data was you can do better than that this is what was wrong with it this is what how I think you should present the data realize that you're presenting to a group of people who are going to notice that data contradicts the data on the next slide and instead uh uh my need to feel I don't know important or whatever put my own needs ahead of theirs I think there's a lot of that I don't think I don't think it's a unique attribute uh but I I'd like to think that I've starched most of most of that out of my professional life I think you just get older uh hopefully you get Kinder you get more self-aware but oh yeah I look back on my career there's a lot I'm not proud of what are you still working on personally uh being present you know you regret and upset about the past anxiety about the future uh take you so out of the present trying to enjoy my sons at boarding school the most difficult thing about
moving here is I come home my boy's not there my my 15-year-old that's really strange for me you'll see when your kids are around they become a limb like when you're not around your kids you feel as if something's wrong I mean the first the first day away from them is amazing and then it gets awful you're like oh God this is wonderful I can sleep in you know I like I used to like business travel especially when their babies babies are tough but now you feel like you're like you're like walking around without a limb is it's just weird and my son's in boarding school here and so coming home and not having him home is just very uh very strange so when he was home yesterday he's only home for a day and a half on the weekends trying to be very in the moment trying to be present I have a tough time one of my talents as an entrepreneur I think is that I'm always thinking about work and focused on [ __ ] so when I show up Monday morning I've kind of got a head start because I'm thinking about problems I'm thinking about stuff but the problem is you're not that present and it's very hard to balance those two because it's so competitive I mean I would imagine I look around I I I know your success I would imagine you're constantly thinking about work right thinking about new new ways to improve things people you can reach out to emails you should send to encourage people you know just constantly think about it once you have kids it's very hard to manage that balance because you want to be present so I'm trying to be present also I'm trying to slow time down time is falling off a cliff for me um I have a chat group with my college friends it was yesterday you know when we were in college it's it's just flown by the last 30 years which means it's going to go even faster and I'm going to be 87 so trying to slow time down trying to be more present that's what I'm working on and uh uh you just trying to be kinder I think I think everyone should from day one just think okay how can I be more kind how do we slow time down my my uh my friend asked me the other day what my superpower would be and that's what I said I said I wish I could pause time yeah and my like I think it's toxic my answer but I was like because then I could get my work done yeah yeah and
continue with with my life and then maybe I could DJ and learn you know some other things but my I've always said that that would that would be my chosen superpower but how does one practically slow time down so that 30 years doesn't fly past so when you're a dad one of the things you realize is you have this image that belief that your kids are going to be into World War II history and Crossfit those are the things I'm interested in and what you find out is kids have their own interests and if you want to be a good dad you have to lean into their interests otherwise you're just not going to have a very strong relationship with them because they they're selfish kids are inherently selfish and they're oh well Dad's really the World War II history so I'll go to the you know the the British war museum and I'll find it fascinating you know that doesn't happen my kids so yesterday I ended up at life-size Monopoly which is this lifesize Monopoly game somewhere and for me that's the seventh ring of hell that's just that's just a but what you try to do to slow time down is I immediately go into like okay just ignore the thing you know check your email be a good dad just do get through it get through it I find you can slow time down by getting into stuff like trying to like s really try and get in get into life-size Monopoly and engage with my child and like be a little bit over the top about it and when they do cheers scream loud like trying just get really into things because if you want time to pass it will it'll cooperate but when you get really into stuff even though you think it's stupid and cheesy and you're like can't help but think God this is like Chinese water torture um I find that slow it down also find leaning into your emotions slows time down because it makes you more present um I didn't cry or laugh out loud from the ages of 30 to 44 for 14 years I didn't cry once and I didn't laugh out loud I for I lost the capacity to uncontrollably laugh and to cry I just kind of forgot how to do either of those things and emotions are things you have to practice so I remember the first time I started crying and the first time I really laughed at loud with friends I thought God did both these things feel great and I started getting really into
those things and feeling guilt when I do something stupid or like trying to really embrace my emotions because that indicates what's important to you what moves you what inspires you what upsets you what pisses you off and I find emotions like real raw emotions when you register them and absorb them and like lean into the messy part of yourself I find that slows time down so getting into stuff and registering your emotions and as a business person you're taught to be a little bit stoic you have this weird sense also as a man of masculinity that men don't feel their emotions but you you start forgetting what's important to you you start forgetting what like is real your things you're into like what what do you find hilarious what makes you well up with tears because you find it so moving without being without doing that stuff you forget what's important to you you forget like you kind of lose your individualism uh anyway so there's and you talked to Simon Sy there's a bunch of people who have a lot of means uh those are my those are my two tricks in your book the algebra of Happiness the third section is about health and you spoke earlier about the importance of it I've really recently over the last two years I'd say learned the importance of health and make sure I work out pretty much every day what are why is health so important you know I've I've been on my own journe to understand it but um one of the things you said was that the most common trait among CEOs is that they exercise regularly um and even think you said you made comments about alcohol being bad for us did you did you take time to learn that I know you've been working out since you were very very young MH but the the overarching role of our health in everything um what have you learned about that and the importance of it well it's kind of where it all starts I mean this is not a rental you know this is not a tress rehearsal your body is it I mean you look you you look like an athlete what do you do every day what do you thank you I'll clip that um and I'll put that in my bio um I do a mixture so I I train for an hour every day um jamim is in my fitness group so about 90% of days a year we we train um yesterday was CrossFit uh yeah yesterday was CrossFit
so yeah so look if you could do something that would make you less depressed make you more likely to be successful F broaden your selection set of mates I mean wouldn't wouldn't you want to take that drug every day it's called exercise we're happiest as a species in motions surrounded by others we've been hunting and Gathering so the things you're going to remember in your life are usually not the CrossFit class but walking around Rome with your family and your kids complaining but being outside in some form of exercise with people you care about so uh an exercise and feeling strong uh I mean it's been my anti-depressant if I don't you know I got here four three four days ago I've only worked out once I can feel myself I'm angrier I'm not as nice I don't feel as good about myself it's I think for a lot of people it is it is the easiest means to an anti-depressant it's the closest thing we have to a youth serum you have this basically 24×7 security camera on in your brain trying to figure out if you're adding value that's the bad news the good news is it's got terrible res solution and you can fool it so if you're caring for other people caregivers generally live longer because your brain will sense that you're caring for other people you're social you're touching people you're concerned and it releases a hormone that lets you stay alive new mothers typically do not die um if you're exercising intensely it fools the camera into believing that you're hunting prey or building housing and it says let's keep this person around longer so it is a great anti-depressant it's a great use serum um I find you're just Kinder you're nicer you're more confident so you know it's I again uh the thing that the Fortune 500 cosos have most in common it's not the schools they went to it's not even their it's not even their ethnicity it is gender only 483 of them are men but more than any practice or attribute it's that they work out four to five times plus a week physical fitness again it's one of my algorithms you should not watch other people sweat for any longer than you sweat and I you know if if you're watching other people sweat four hours a week and you're
sweating one hour a week you're in trouble do not you have to sweat more than you watch other people sweat the other thing we have in common is um our backgrounds in advertising and brand you you speak a lot about um branding and advertising um I sat here with Rory Sutherland and that was one of our real best performing episodes I didn't realize there was such a demand on from our audience in terms of practical advertising knowledge he talked a lot about Apple and Tesla and the secrets there how is the the the the the the lands of advertising and a brand building a reputation changed in your lifetime and what is the most important thing for Brands to understand now or some of the important things for Brands to understand now if they are to be successful yeah so my first job in business school I started a company called profit brand strategy that's now about 500 people now it's just called profit and the basic notion was it was based on the principles of my professor my second year David 's considered the father of modern branding and it was that the intangible associations with a brand or set of products or services are the only sustainable advantage that if you can wrap a set of products and services with these brand codes of masculinity European Elegance Youth and then pound away at those associations using this incredibly chap cheap efficient medium called broadcast advertising you can take a marginal shoe salty snack marginal car and get amazing margins on it so that was that's been the from the end of World War II to the introduction of Google in the 90s the algorithm for creating massive shareholder wealth was find a mediocre product wrap it in amazing brand codes and make people feel more patriotic or more or younger stuff the Channel with it and print money the pgs the Pepsi Co of the world you know the coca-colas these were the economic Titans of yester year the sun has passed midday on that because our weapons of diligence whether it's Google or trip advis or Amazon reviews now gets us to the best product without the benefit of this weapon of diligence called brand when I come came to London I used to stay at the Four Seasons in the mandin Oriental why because someone else was paying and
their old was an eight and then I went on trip advisor and I went on my social graph and I found out the people love the conet hotel or people love the Ferndale hotels I I started staying at the Hay Market why I like a place from a nice gym and I want to pay stay at with hang out with people who are younger and cooler than me so I started staying at boutique hotels so all of a sudden product became the bomb again and then your ability to embrace these new mediums around social became more important than broadcast advertising so the traditional metrics of branding the traditional vehicles for Branding a brand identity and broadcast advertising that I've been preaching in brand strategy the sun has passed midday if you look at my curriculum and the majority of curriculums and marketing departments You could argue that we're just training people to go to work at Unilever or General Mills and be laid off 24 months later uh branding has become much more about Innovation and actual product quality now that extends into how you discover the product how you absorb the product the community around it but you know Tesla is a better product Apple used to be an underpowered product with a great brand now it's a great brand with a superior product so these Airbnb is a much better product these things are G Google is 10x better than what was there before it so supply chain uh design the way you absorb the product its ease of use you know it's just it's moved from kind of what you call a brand economy to for back lack of a better term an innovation economy so rather than taking classes on Advertising I say take classes on supply chain or analytics or really understand industrial design you know there was a general feeling that all product quality had maxed out and then the internet came along and unlocked all this product Innovation so cars they felt that hit kind of a peak in terms of product quality and then all of a sudden with the internet and GPS you could you could tune a car up uh wirelessly you you can unlock the doors uh there was all kinds of crazy things you could do with it uh in addition to in addition to EV I mean there's just been so much actual Innovation around the product and what are the most
valuable companies in the world have in common they either spend no money on advertising or they're spending less Apple's the strongest brand in the world at least a consumer brand I would argue the strongest mans in the world universities but it's reallocated six or seven billion dollars out of broadcast advertising into its channel into stores so buildt 550 temples to the brand and I think of that as almost part of the product my 12-year-old and I were bored yesterday so we went to the Apple Store so that's kind of consuming the product and I end up buying screen savers and new cases that I'm sure are 90 points of gross margin that I could find a fck or Best Buy or someone for less money but we want to be in that store and in that environment so it's it's moving out of pre- purchase broadcast advertising into the distribution Channel and into Innovation but the traditional the traditional Norms of marketing or branding as I taught it that shit's over Don Draper has been drawn and quartered if you're watching a lot of advertising it means your life hasn't worked out the majority of people who are technically literate or um uh wealthy can avoid 80 90% of advertising now they watch Netflix they they subscribe to Spotify they live in cities where they have uh local officials that demand you can't see a billboard from a park um so advertising is a tax on the poor and the technologically illiterate so it's moved to more distribution and Innovation but for God's sakes don't you know avoid the of falling into the Trap of thinking that the Masters of the Universe are branders or advertisers if they are innovators then how does one make make themselves or their team more Innovative this is the question I get asked all the time yeah when I speak at conferences or to businesses it's well you know how do we how do we make our 500 people in our company in innovate because you'll see the CEO standing you know in front of the the board meeting on or the the All Hands and say we need to be more Innovative yeah what does that mean right does [ __ ] all we all know that but by Design how how do we create an Innovative mindset ourselves or
Innovative teams that's a tough one I don't consider myself um an expert on culture although it's clearly out there like I think of HBO HBO if there's a show that people are talking about I don't know if the same is true but in the US people are talking if there's a show people are talking about the water cooler it's Euphoria it's succession it's generally an HBO show and they have about a third of the budget of some of the other streaming networks so there's something about that culture where they're able to come up with kind of breakthrough creative some companies just seem to do that time and time again agreed and so it's a culture thing at the heart of it even Apple you you know yeah especially under the ear of Steve Jobs they seem to take some unbelievably scary um bets that paid off obviously a lot of them don't some of them don't but Amazon's the same AWS the Kindle 100% yeah so you know I mean you know there's some Basics it's a willingness to fail to take big bets to reward people for taking risks I think an external Viewpoint that's constantly benchmarking other companies I mean my last reml to essentially what we did was we went out and bench marked the best practices of every company in Social e-commerce payments and then came in and said okay unil lever okay Nike what can you learn from everyone from Adidas to Tata Motors like what are they doing that's really interesting so having an external Viewpoint a willing to take big bats I also think holding people accountable found businesses seem to to be much more Innovative obviously I think they they often fail quicker as well but they seem to have a higher risk appetite than fered businesses we have a closing tradition on this podcast right where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest they don't know who they're leaving it for and I don't get to read it until I open the book um the question that's been left for you okay do I get to know who left it you don't I don't oh no okay what is your biggest regret personally and if you could go back what would you do differently it's funny it's the questions that are obvious over the
heart my biggest regret personally I wish I had been Kinder from an earlier age I think it's good for the world I think it makes me feel more masculine it makes me feel more successful to be kind and I didn't stumble upon that I wish i' i' come to that realization sooner that to be generous to be loving to be you know the uh Cindy Gallop a friend of mine says that the the most wasted resource is good intentions I wish my good intentions had I was more ready more confident to articulate the kind thoughts I had about others and to articulate them with more ease I've thought good things about other people I've wanted to do good things for a long time but I didn't have the confidence or the discipline to either say them or do them I wish I'd had that confidence earlier because the majority of us are good people the majority of us admire other people the majority of us love other people and we don't want to articulate it I think especially men because we're worried that saying I admire you or you know you're just such a handsome young buff man who's who's acquired so much success at a young age I'm kind of like trying to figure out I'd love to know like how did you do all this at such a young age saying that is embarrassing for a man there's this feeling among men that me saying that makes me less successful and masculine like it's a zero sum game and what you realize as you get older is that is that is how you feel strong and how you feel kind I wish I'd figured that out earlier I wish I'd been more forth coming with my positive emotions does that end up making us miserable personally so if I if I have that kind of it's almost a form of resentment isn't it we I think we all have it I think when Justin Bieber came onto the scene and I looked over and there was this like 14-year-old that had all the women and he was beautiful and he was selling out these Arenas I'm thinking [ __ ] it this guy well shadon Freud I mean it's just resentment of other people's success I think that's different I think I think Justin Bieber worn some hate um but for sure but the reason I I was hating on him was purely jealousy it was fair enough but I my sense is you seem pretty self-actualized
at your age I was at the age of 30 as an entrepreneur if my team was doing a great job and there was a great shot I rewarded them at the end of the year with a bonus as you get older what you realize is young people need watering it doesn't matter how successful they are it doesn't have much money they're making when you say I sent a text this morning we did a my prop G has this this new thing called we have something called a markets podcast which is focused on the markets the team did such an amazing job with the sound edits today and it's a 24y old it's a 24y old doing this [ __ ] and she has such a feel and name is CLA Miller she has such a feel for how to integrate Sound and Music and knows when to fade it in and fade it out and I immediately registered that and I think oh me registering that is really good for her because I'm the boss well why wouldn't you pull out your phone phone and say your integration of sound here is so striking and your talent is so ahead of where you are and I did that and I know when she wakes up this morning and gets that text message it's just gonna make her mourning it's just going to make her mourning 20 years ago I didn't think to do that why I don't know I just didn't do it just didn't I don't know selfish didn't want to give up that again S as somewhat of lazy not kind I don't know is there an element of thinking that if you give the compliment then someone can become complacent or they can become they might not strive as hard maybe I don't know I saw my job as a CEO back when was um all over everybody all of the time I mean just all the time and I'm still like that not as bad a little bit as well to be fair and look there's that's you can do that and still be kind I was on a panel with other CEOs and they asked what is your management philosophy and this one woman who runs a very successful uh startup said it's putting people in the role to succeed and the other one and the other person said it's it's helping people find their true self finding what they're really passionate about and then they came to me like I'm all [ __ ] over everybody all of the [ __ ] time and every you know I just went I'm like I don't know
how else to do it I'm just all over and I realized maybe that's why I've never been able to grow a billion dollar business cuz I'm just to I don't want say in the weeds I do give people uh I think a decent amount of latitude but I don't know how else to do it just to you know kind of be all over everything all of the time I I don't maybe that's why again I don't I'm not running a multi-billion dollar franchise I can relate I can relate um I can relate to that a lot but that's a conversation for another time I guess because it's not as much about me but thank you Scott for your time and your wisom I followed you for some time and I remember going out to Barley a couple of years ago grabbing the book in the airport when I was off to write my own book so I your book was a source of inspiration for me I remember reading on my desk there in Uber um and that's why I was surprised it wasn't behind me today but I guess it's upstairs and your your [ __ ] free approach to sharing yourself and your ideas is is incredibly important we I think we've seen a sort of a decline in a willingness to be both vulnerable um and brutally honest about our perspectives and doesn't mean our perspectives are always correct but but the Collision of two ideas that are honest I think is how we ultimately lead to progress so I love that and that's why we ultimately have this podcast your new book a drift America and 100 charts is out now yep why did you write that book of all the things you you know you know so much about so many things and you talk about so many topics why that book um I'm fascinated with the idea of a nation and connective tissue I feel very patriotic as I get older I'm more grateful for my blessings and one of my blessings I talked about was being born in America and I wanted uh I love charts we've been communicating with words since the alphabet for 1500 years but we've been communicating with images whether it was reading them off the cave cave walls or the walls of caves or looking at the height of the sun and the sky for tens of thousands so I've always been really drawn to charts we can process information 6 to 60 times faster when it's visual so I thought how can I create a narrative around what Al's America and what are some of the
solutions with charts so it's a chart and then a narrative second chart and a narrative all grouped into themes and also I just want to write a book every 12 to 15 months I feel like it's the hardest thing I do but I feel like it keeps me sort of young and some of those narratives are conversations we've had today but explained in more context um and all of your books books have been important for me it's because of the way that you write oh thanks it's not it's not just the content itself but it's writing in such an accessible way which can make a very complicated theme be accessible to someone like me who is not I don't consider myself to be an intellectual in any capacity and thank you for your time today uh it's a real Stroke of Luck that you now live in London and you're able to be here and do this and I feel very honored that you came so thank you I appreciate that congratulations on all your success thank you so much Scott it's a pleasure quick word from one of our sponsors I've got a tip for all of you that will make your virtual meeting experiences I think 10 times better as some of you may know by now Blue Jeans by Verizon offers seamless high quality video conferencing but the reason why I use blue jeans versus other video conferencing tools is because of immersion their tools make you feel more connected to the employees or customers you're trying to engage with and now they're launching one of their biggest feature enhancements to impact virtual events so far called Blue Jean Studio I actually used it the other day I did a virtual event using the studio which I think about 700 you came to TV level production quality all done by one person with very little technical experience on a laptop so if you've got an event coming up and you're thinking about doing it virtually check out blue jean studio now let me know what you think because I genuinely believe I know this is an advert and I'm supposed to say this but I genuinely believe it's the best tool I've seen for doing really immersive simple but high quality production virtual events there is a really exciting new product coming from H which the founder Julian told me about yesterday on WhatsApp um and it's something I've wanted from H for a long time because when I look at my kind of nutrition stack the things that I have
and consume every single day to keep me performing at my best and in a good shape and healthy there's one thing missing which you'll currently don't do and to get that message from juline yesterday and to know it's on it on its way is tremendously exciting the thing about hu is they always focus on a couple of core principles which is making sure that the the stuff inside the products are not only nutritionally complete but they're sourced from suppliers that provide the best quality nutritions and to know that H now going into more categories that are essential to my nutrition stack is incredibly exciting so if you're starting your hu Journey or you haven't started your hu Journey my recommendation is to get the starter pack they have on the website I'll link it down below and that gives you a little bit of all the products in a box and then from that you can decide which products are for you and where they fit in your life and I think if you're anything like me you might just fall in love with the brand oh [Music] [Music]