The Single Biggest Point of Failure In A Man's Life | Scott Galloway X Rich Roll Podcast

we're raising a generation of men who are going to just be increasingly psychotic and crazy that was ugly that is like yeah it's so depressing what does healthy masculinity look like masculinity is amazing thing you shouldn't apologize for it you should lean into it but what does it mean we've conflated toxicity with masculinity there's so many lonely young men who don't have any interaction with people very susceptible to anything or any algorithm giving them a sense of self worth I would have been one of those guys today angry upset so I relate my guest today is Scott Galloway Scott is a professor of marketing at NYU Stern School of Business he's a bestselling author he's also the host of the Prof G podcast and co-host of the pivot podcast with Caris Swisher masculinity is a societal construct and a lot of women demonstrate wonderful masculinity it's not the domain of people born as men in urban areas now in the US women under the age of 30 are making more money than men and by the way that's wonderful we should do nothing to get in the way of that women are I think ready for more economically and emotionally liable young men so the question is how do we level up young [Music] men today's episode is brought to you by the awesome organization that make this show [Music] possible Scott thank you for doing this I know it's a schlep to come out here I appreciate you making the time uh been looking forward to this for a very long time and there's so much to talk about you're such an interesting figure you're at the intersection of Business and Entrepreneurship advice you're sort of this really smart cultural critic pundit on Tech the Reformation of higher education and also self-help you have this really sagacious uh facility for counsel that's aimed broadly but also very specifically this particular lens on young men and this concern that you have for the next generation and I think the sentiment behind it is really that we have a demonstrable problem with males in the Next Generation the culture of men the evolution of men the growth of men who they are where and how they are being being guided or not being guided and how they're being distracted or or LED astray in a way that's that's really interfering with their growth and their potential and in turn like the growth of a healthy Society yeah well first off thanks for the kind words I think I said when I came in we went through all the podcast invites we have and I just mentioned your name and before I even finished it like half my staff would just went ape [ __ ] you deeply resonate with a lot of people I appreciate that yeah look this is something that I'm passionate about I think the data is overwhelming you know three times as likely to be addicted four times as likely to kill themselves as women uh 12 times likely to be incarcerated 70% opioid every day you know we don't have a homeless problem we don't have an opioid problem we don't have an incarceration problem we have a male suicide homeless and incarceration problem and if any other special interest group were committing suicide at four times the rate of the control group we would talk about it in different terms we would talk about the need for social programs intervention empathy but when something like this happens to young men there's a lack of empathy you hear words like accountability or if they were just more in touch with their emotions and I think that's really gotten in the way of a productive conversation and because there hasn't been a productive conversation and people out there feel and see what's going on some voices have entered into that void that are sort of unproductive voices and sometimes that kind of this proman rhetoric oftentimes is just suddenly veiled misogyny or a lack of empathy or kind of what I'll call the manosphere starts off fine it's be action-oriented be fit take control but then it goes to really weird places it treats women as property or talks about immigrants taking your job or just sign up for my crypto University it just goes to weird places it's also been a bit of a third rail issue to raise the Peril of the Wayward young man in a world in which the conversation uh around elevating certain sectors of culture and Society is about women and people of color and yet the quote that I've heard you often repeat is the most dangerous person in the world is a man that is broken and alone if you look globally the most unstable violent Societies in the world all have one thing in common they have a disproportionate amount of young men with a lack of economic or romantic prospects what do we do we send them off to war if they don't have economic prospects internally they'll overthrow the government so we find conflict and we send them off to war also this younger generation of men is paying for the unfair Advantage you and I had growing up I was born in Los Angeles or Southern California 1964 I hit the lottery you know being born a wi heterosexual male just had huge advantage in California myself as well I was born in ' 66 you went to UCLA I went to Stanford I'm the beneficiary of you know an incredible education and and privil and now that you know access to what you and I had access to is all the more remote these days like what is going on like how did we get to this place what are the tectonic plates that have led us to this situation that we find ourselves in so just to make the point around accessibility I don't know the numbers in Stanford but when I applied to UCLA in 1982 the acceptance rate was 76% and it cost $1,200 a year and I had to apply twice and I got in the acceptance rate this year will be 9% and it's $34,000 so it's just inaccessible to anyone who's not remarkable remarkable or Rich so how did we get here I think there's been a variety of things Confluence of factors that have all collided around young men one there's just a lack of empathy people see it as a zero some game where if you feel empathy for men it must mean that you are anti-women and so there's a lack of empathy and what I call zero some gaming it you know civil rights didn't hurt white people it helped them gay marriage doesn't hurt heteronormative marriage it it enhances is it so to talk about empathy for young men is in no way and should in no way be seeing as anti-women I think the group that wants more viable young men uh first and foremost mothers that's who I hear from the most who see what's going on with their daughters and the difference between their daughters and their sons and also women women are I think ready for more economically and emotionally viable young men women are dating older and older because they're having trouble finding what they would perceive as viable young men so a few things one just bi iCal men's prefrontal cortex matures later they just don't have the same executive function or adult in the room they're less mature literally less mature two we have an education system that is biased against them if you talk about the behaviors re reward in school you're essentially going to describe a girl be organized be a pleaser sit still you also have an education industrial complex 92% of kindergarten teachers are women there's more female per capita F pilots in kindergarten male kindergarten teachers it's about 70 80% K through six and about 60 70% in high school and naturally you're going to empathize with a little version of you so I just don't think there's the same level of empathy for young men we've also done away with metal shop auto shop um wood shop so the guy who's not cut out for college who doesn't sit still who's not academically focused has fewer and fewer on-ramps into a middle class lifestyle and then these guys get into the workforce there's fewer middle class trades jobs in America parents have done a really good job of convincing themselves theyve failed as a parent if their kid doesn't end up at Stanford or UCLA so there's a lot of rage and shame in the household there's not visible on-ramps into a healthy middle class life 3% of LinkedIn Profiles In America say Apprentice It's 11% in the UK and Germany 50% of Germans have some sort of vocational certification that's not true year it's kind of become this you either get to Stanford or UCLA or you and your parents have failed and then a lot of Dynamics dating apps where you have two 3 to one uh men to women and you also have this effect where because everyone has access to everyone not everyone but women who have a much finer filter are all drawn to the kind of what I call same guy so you have 50 men on tender 50 women 46 of those women will show all of their attention and interest to just four guys so it's great to be in the top 10% on a dating app if you're a guy the bottom 90 it's really difficult and the bottom half of men on dating apps were now one and two relationships begin get validation that they have absolutely no worth in the dating market so a lack of economic prospects a lack of maturity a society that doesn't seem to have a lot of empathy for them and then a mating Market that validates they don't have a lot of value and you see these men go down this downward spiral where they start and this is where you know they we've really lost them they start becoming Ultra nationalist they start blaming immigrants they start blaming women they become prone to conspiracy theory in some they just become really shitty citizens and the final thing I would say is that the most profitable valuable companies in the world have one thing in common and that is they're tapping into a lack of Regulation and instinctive flaws men are more risk aggressive so the fastest growing technology sector right now is gaming which is a polite way of saying gambling men more risk aggressive they like to gamble 85% of gamblers are men they're four to six times more likely to develop a gambling addiction you then put it on a phone and you have Kevin Hart and Charles Barkley telling you that you're smart you should bet on March Madness and then you have social media apps or Robin Hood or or meta or YouTube sort of tapping into these instincts these flawed instincts of men where they become prone to conspiracy theory more much more risk aggressive much more inclined to develop a relationship with uPorn as opposed to saying okay how do I go out there and develop the skills and the game and the economic and emotional viability to find my own romantic partner they're mistaking Reddit and Discord for friendship they're mistaking Robin Hood and coinbase for making a living they're mistaking up porn for establishing a relationship and so a lot of these men have had the real world or the motiv to find real relationships replaced with algorithms and screens it's a low entry lowrisk cost of having a reasonable faim of life and if you're not careful you wake up a few years later you don't have those skills and you're depressed because getting out and finding a job getting out going into work getting up putting on a tie learning how to read the room learning how to make a woman laugh establish body language be persistent endure rejection you know there's a reason romantic comedies are two hours not 15 minutes this [ __ ] is hard and it's humiliating but that's what real victory in real life looks like and I think there's a disproportionate or a small number of men young men who are ever going to experience that real joy and that real Victory because of the low cost low entry reasonable fact simil of life that these companies prey on that's a pretty dire portrait of the current state of affairs the eradication of opportunity the lack of adequate on-ramps to higher education and the you know the Confluence of all these technologies that are conspiring to capture the attention of the young male and channel it in unhealthy ways is going to leave that individual not just depressed but angry and looking for an outlet for that anger well there's an upside if you're in the top 10% life's never been better we're in a Hunger Games economy the win leads a remarkable life and everybody else has a slow death if you have your [ __ ] together as a young man and you have the discipline to get the right certification the graduates in my class at Stern I teach the MBA their average salary is $212,000 they go on a dating app they're going to get a ton of attention their opportunities have never been more exceptional their vacations their ability to take care of their parents at a young age their Economic Opportunity their chance to make millions is Within Reach by the time the 30 those opportunities did not exist for our parents so it's become sort of a winner take most environment so it's great to be in the top 10% but I can prove to all of us that 90% of our sons are not in the top 10% and when you think about it goes back to me like what is America supposed to be and the reason I've got involved here I was in that bottom 90 I was probably in that bottom 50 is America about identifying the remarkable or identifying the children of rich people and turning them into billionaires is that what America is supposed to do my view is America is about identifying or giving everyone in the bottom 90 is shot to be in the top 10% that's how it was when I grew up I was unremarkable I think that when I look at you I see somebody I mean you're you're clearly passionate about this this is a very mission-based service oriented kind of endeavor that you found yourself in and you're somebody who's had many successes in different areas of life you have economic independence you could choose to be doing lots of different things and you've chosen through all of way that you show up publicly in Prof G media and the podcasting Etc to really focus your advocacy around this and it strikes me as very Earnest and and heartfelt like this really is a mission that you're passionate about I don't know how much about you rich but I I was that guy you know I didn't have a lot of money no no romantic prospects but um need a minute America loved me right free education remarkable institution great job a chance to you know get economically viable chance to take care of my mother like I would have been one of those guys today angry upset so I relate yeah your mother was an integral figure in all of this yeah look the reason I'm here here with you now it's easy to credit your grit and your character for your success and blame the market for your failures I get to come here and I get to bomb out of here and go to the Bly Hills Hotel and have like a you know do whatever the [ __ ] I want and you know have an incredible life because of one the generosity and vision of California taxpayers and the regen of University of California who said our job is to give unremarkable kids a remarkable opportunity being born at the right place at the right time and the unconditional love of my mother right single immigrant mother lived and died a secretary but you know every day told me that I was wonderful and I think that's stuck with me but yeah like I don't know what your relationship was like with your parents but if you think about investing there's some Basics right you invest a little bit of money compound interest is just this remarkable thing most people feel that the singular relationship in their life if they're asked to identify the singular relationship in their life they usually more often than not number one is their mother and it's because she made those tiny little investments in you every day waking you up with a soft voice worried about you could hear you get up when you were a kid and come in and comfort you every day just dozens of little Investments and you know your mom wakes up and you wake up when you're older regardless of whether you don't get along maybe you don't even like each other but it's a singular relationship and you know I think a lot about the relationship how powerful it was for me and what was really wonderful about my mom and she had the foresight to get a lot of men involved in my life because if you look at the single point of failure in a young man's life it's when he loses a male role model and it's interesting because we have the second most single parent homes in the World Behind Sweden and when we say single parent 92% of the time that means it's a single mother and what's interesting is the data shows that the daughters of single mothers have the same outcome same College attendance same income same rates of self harm boys once they lose a male role model immediately become dramatically more likely to be incarcerated dramatically less likely to graduate from high school dramatically more likely to suffer from addiction what it ends up is that while boys are physically stronger they're emotionally and mentally much weaker just because you say it's really important that a boy have a man involved in his life that's in no way diminishing the super Heroes that are single mothers but I think we have to acknowledge that it is really important that men be involved and that's the problem with schools now that don't have enough men because there's an entire generation of young men that go through their lives until they're 25 with absolutely no men involved and if you have kids you see that occasionally dad just plays a bigger role his physical size his voice whatever it might be and I'm thinking a lot about masculinity I think the ultimate expression of masculinity is I've got my [ __ ] so together I can take care of myself I can take care of my immediate family I can take care of my kids the people I work with you know I pay good taxes but the ultimate expression of masculinity is getting involved in the life of a boy that isn't yours and unfortunately Michael Jackson and Catholic Church have [ __ ] it up for all of us and created this weird notion that if you're a guy your age and you're super successful you might have love to give and you might see a 15-year-old boy that could use your help and it feels unnatural to get involved in his life and that's not true yeah the culture of mentorship has waned to say the least and you know I think it's fair to say that America was built on the idea of apprenticeship and and mentorship but that culture seems to have evaporated like where are the mentors where are the sage councils and the you know healthy masculine men who are helping to guide the Next Generation Well I got it from coaches but a lot of kids aren't going to church though they used to get it from the Reverend or the rabbi community oriented programs have gone away what are the rates of young men in sports is it the way that it was when we were kids are less young men participating in sports and where are the other healthy outlets for the young men in need of mentorship so Sports is like most thing there's still the same level of participation but unfortunately it's been crowded towards the wealthy engaging in a sport has become not a luxury item but pretty close even if you look at the college athletes outside of basball basketball and football it's disproportionately rich kids cuz if your kid wants to play lacrosse to send them to lacrosse camps or her to lacrosse camps and get them the right training and the right equipment it's just expensive but I think you know sports are and after school programs are being cut but going to Solutions I think there's a ton of solutions so starting boys a year late in elementary school they're just less mature the the worst thing that happened to me or almost happened to me is my parents wanted me to skip a grade because was back in the space race and if you were offered the opportunity to skip a grade that meant you were going to be a work for NASA I showed up at UCLA at the age of 17 and I was way too immature to handle the alcohol and the the pressure of it all start him a year later trying to create greater incentives to get more men in um primary and secondary high school and Elementary School more vocational programming there's just a ton of jobs in the real economy for specialty construction specialty nursing anyone who's renovating a house knows that a roof makes really good money much less a plumber and stop shaming those jobs start elevating them uh I think we have to level up young people in general there's been an enormous transfer of wealth from young people to old people specifically people under the age of 40 used to control 19% of the GDP in terms of their wealth it's been cut to 9% the average 7-year-old is 72% wealthier than they were 40 years ago the average person under the age of 40 is 24% less wealthy and that affects women and men but it's disproportionately affecting men because men are fairly or unfairly evaluated from a mating perspective based on their economic viability the best example of I think that depicts this the the greatest innovation in history wasn't the iPhone or a semiconductor it was the American middle class thought Wars pushed back on fascism paid an enormous amount of taxes was Innovative came up with DARPA came up with vaccines came up with GPS and where it all started was 7 million men return from World War II and they demonstrated excellence in uniform and the government said we're going to make a massive investment in them in terms of the GI bill in the highway Construction Bill we're going them jobs we're going to them economic viability and quite frankly they were just very attractive and they had an easier time finding mating finding a house two-car garage and it set off the baby boom and it set off a generation of confident loving kids who were comfortable and said all right it's time for civil rights it's time to bring women into the workforce it's time for women rights and it just set off this kind of you know postor War II liberal Progressive Society the likes of which we've never seen that type of prosperity but the middle class is an accident it doesn't self- sustain the incumbents and people on the far right will claim that the middle class is a self-repairing organism it's not it's an anomaly middle classes have never existed in society before we we figured it out but unless you have economically and emotionally viable men you can't have a middle class so the question is how do we level up young men men and I don't think you can just have affirmative action for men I think that's too political but I do think we have to put more money into the pockets of young people who have seen a transfer of wealth and I'll touch a third rail here every year we transfer one and a half trillion dollars the greatest economic transfer in history happens every year from young people to the wealthiest generation in history senior citizens and it's called Social Security and it just is insane that this group that is consistently seeing their wealth and on an inflation adjusted basis their livelihood go down and down and down transfer money to the wealthiest population in the world so let's talk more about economics mortgage tax deduction and capital gains are the two biggest deductions in our tax code who makes their money selling stocks and selling assets guys my age who makes their money with sweat the the guys in this room the younger guys who owns homes older people who rents younger people I feel like almost every economic policy is nothing but a thinly veiled TR transfer of wealth from The Young to the old and then the final one the greatest intergenerational train robbery in history was the cares Act and the transfer of wealth during covid 85% of the money flushed into households was saved it wasn't spent so five of the7 trillion dollars wasn't spent on food or housing it went into the markets which absolutely sent the asset prices of real estate and stock markets screaming who owns homes and stocks the incumbents and the old the reason I'm rich is because in 2008 the government let the economy crash it bailed out Banks but it didn't bail out the economy I had a little bit of money I was coming into my Prime income earning years so I was able to buy apple and Amazon and Netflix at seven four and 10 bucks right yeah where the [ __ ] did these guys put their money out Nvidia at $900 a share what do they buy a home in agura Hills a cute ranch home for $2.3 million when they bailed out me and the incumbents 3 years ago all they were doing was robbing opportunity from young people when you bail out the Boomer who owns a restaurant all you're doing is robbing opportunity from the 26-year-old female graduate of the Brookland Culinary Academy she's not getting her shot churn and turnover are key are key to giving young people an opportunity so we effectively decided during Co was a million people dying would be bad but letting the NASDAQ go down and making Boomer less Rich would be tragic it was pure theft and who's going to have to pay for this [ __ ] not you or me them and their kids yeah that doesn't bode well you know and then when you think about that in the context of increasing polarization and the kind of denigration of our public discourse and the increase in distrust in institutions matched with the lack of opportunity and everything that you just outlined uh like does America survive this like how are we GNA get back to a place where we're providing adequate opportunity to young people and we're in a social contract with our brothers and sisters where we agree upon the things that are important to create a healthy culture that can survive and flourish as a Democratic Republic well I mean the ground zero I think for almost all of our problems or the the incendiary port on our problems is that for the first time in our nation's history a 30-year-old man or woman isn't doing as well as his or parents were at 30 that's never happened before what's so upsetting about it is it's in the face of unprecedented Prosperity five minutes post the earnings release of Nvidia it adds $240 billion in market capitalization but we can't afford the child tax credit child tax credit between 24 and 40 billion dollar immediately eliminated poverty for 40% of kids and food in secure homes like I didn't even think you could do that with 2440 million we spent $800 billion on our military and I'm not suggesting we should reduce it I think it's important we have a robust defense department but what do you know Social Security gets a 9% cost of living adjustment increase and the child tax credit gets stripped out of the infrastructure bill so we have elected representatives average age 63 DC is a cross between The Walking Dead and The Golden Girls and if that sounds aist it is aist but here's the thing do they really relate to a 28-year-old who's trying to build a home with kids and kids don't vote and young people don't vote but old people vote so we're about to see for the first time in our nation's history almost 50% of our our entire federal budget be allocated towards seniors and young people as a result just don't have as much opportunity and they're not dumb it pisses them off they look up they see us they see the opportunities we had they see how much money is being spent on seniors and then every day they're reminded that they're failing they live in a society where algorithms are constantly telling them everyone else is Rich you failed if you're not hanging out at the Almond hotel or you're not flying private or you don't have a six-pack or you don't have a hot boyfriend or hot girlfriend you failed and you get these reminders every day so I think these righteous movements around black lives matter and me too they are righteous movements but every movement now has a ton of incendiary report on it cuz young people are just angry they're just like okay my neighbor works at Google she's killing it I'm not in the top 1% and the thing is we're As Americans our superpowers our optimism but we all believe our kid is going to be in that top 1% and I just think we moved away from America which used to be about giving unremarkable kids a remarkable opportunity to we've decided okay let's elect a series of people who continue to transfer wealth from young people and oh wait Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates dropped out of college that can happen well okay but most young people if you look at the numbers are having a tough time we have the most anxious depressed generation in history the science is in people hot and cold therapy in other words using sauna and cold water immersion has so many powerful benefits like lowering inflammation reducing muscle soreness boosting energy and elevating food but the thing is DIY ice baths are this colossal Hassle and basically just impractical making the whole Affair unsustainable which is a problem solved by the guys at plunge who pioneered the all-in-one solution this gorgeous elegant modern tub that's easy to install indoors or out with Cooling and filtration built right into it so it basically requires almost zero maintenance and I use it almost every single day which has greatly impacted my physical health and I got to say vastly improved my mental well-being the plune team now also offers a beautiful sauna for the ultimate hot cold experience this gorgeously designed addition to your space I got mine up and running recently and I got to say I can no longer imagine life without it it really has been an absolute GameChanger for my physical health of course but also all these profound benefits to my mental well-being to learn more and get your own cold plunge tub or sauna visit plunge. and hit the link in the description below and use code Rich Roll to get $150 off your purchase one of the solutions to providing greater opportunity is to better democratize access to higher education and you know one of the things you talk a lot about is how we need to be reforming those institutions which have become luxury brands that thrive on scarcity as opposed to being public servants who are trying to Elevate the sort of base level intelligence of the younger Generations like we have a tendency to believe that me and my colleagues are somehow more noble than the rest of the population and we sit around with our Labradors and our corduroy vest watching PBS thinking about how to make the world a better place and there's some of that I have remarkable colleagues who are good people but we're like everybody else and I think we wake up a lot of Administrators and Leadership on campus wake up and ask themselves the same question every day when they look in the mirror how do I increase my compensation while reducing my accountability and we found the ultimate strategy I call the lvm strategy when I went to UCLA the facilities were shitty but 76% got in and it was 400 bucks and what they figured out as I know keep the admissions rates static and low when the dean announced is we rejected 92% of our applicants this year to NYU we stand up and we applaud and the alumni love it because their degree goes up in value and this same rejectionist lvm strategy has been adopted across the larger economy if you own a home you get very concerned you're in the Malibu Canyon I bet any homeowner in the Malibu Canyon takes a real interest in new plans for new development and they show up and they're very concerned and come up with thoughtful reasons why new developments never get the permits and the result is we have a shortage every year of somewhere between 1.2 and 1.5 million houses we need and then you have big companies who weaponize government and create it harder and harder for small companies to emerge so the result is the incumbents see their asset values increase uh but people can't get any of these schools Harvard sits on a 53 billion dollar endowment which is the GDP of Costa Rica and it's kept its Freshman Class at500 kids a good Starbucks serves 1500 people they could admit 15,000 and have no tax absolutely no tax on the resources so one of the solutions in my view is if you are not growing your freshman enrollment faster than population growth you should lose your nonprofit status and covid provided the perfect opportunity to re-evaluate what you just shared and create a situation through online education to broaden the aperture and make it accessible to so many more people and we all know what happened that didn't happen it didn't yeah I speak at a lot of Corporations a lot of big companies and they'll say what can we do the first thing a corporation could do to make this better is to stop fetishizing graduates from Elite universities when I went to work for Morgan Stanley they recruited at Stanford and Berkeley and I was the first analyst that hired out a UCLA UCLA wasn't good enough for them and I fell into this trap when I started my company I fetishized hiring people we only hire hire people from Berkeley Stanford UCLA and for some reason UVA we had people from UVA when you decide that that you're only hiring from Elite universities you're saying I'm not interested in single mothers you're immediately excluding people who don't even have Rich parents are freakishly remarkable so my recommendation I was talking to the co Salesforce about this move away from a certification based hiring strategy to a skills-based strategy how do you figure out the testing and it's expensive and it's hard to hire really talented young people that based on their skills as opposed to their certification because the reason we have entered into this LV Mage strategy at Elite universities is that corporations love it people think our student is our consumer no our consumer is our product our consumer is the corporation and the corporation is basically outsourc screening and hiring to these universities thinking if they're only living an 8% of their applicants they must be pretty good MH so corporations moving to a certification saying 10% 20% 50% of our applicants and I'm not talking about admin jobs I'm talking about professional track jobs are going to be reserved for People based on a skills-based assessment where it is certification blind you couldn't get past the front desk without an elite University degree in Morgan Stanley when I was there isn't Tech a little bit different though I feel like they are slightly more Progressive in terms of how they hire because they are looking at skills and it's a bit more untethered from pedigree is that true a little bit especially around programming but I would argue if you want a job in a traditional professional track and met alphabet it's pretty hard to get in without an elite University degree MH and it's a self-reinforcing mechanism because they're so populated with people from amazing universities I mean this goes back to why it's so important you get out of your house and that you're social because there was just a study done at Google and a hiring manager says we put out a job opening for a product manager we get immediately 200 resumés and we cut it down because we don't need more than 200 we decide to bring in 20 people and of the 20 people the hire we make is almost always someone who was referred internally so if you want a job you better have a lot of friends MH uh but I don't know I think Tech is probably as big an offender I think Tech Founders oftentimes don't have college degrees if you're an AI engineer okay fine you don't need a degree but I would argue for the majority of the jobs the professional track jobs they still fetishize an elite college degree part of getting young males out of the basement and into the world and face face to face with people requires some modeling of that healthy behavior and I think what's so potent about who you are and how you show up is that you're this really successful dude but you're also like an alpha guy who's Progressive who's Ry baled at times like you're not afraid to tell a dirty joke you're strong you're fit and you know what you're talking about when you're talking about economics and social sciences Etc why aren't there more people like you well you're you're being generous let's unpack that uh remember the Presidential Fitness Awards sure I was going to figure out a way I got a three years in a row and then I hit a gross spurt in the eth grade and I didn't get the badge and it was devastating for me and I started doing pull-ups every day until I got back to seven pull-ups which is what I needed we have become so politically correct that we romanticize obesity you're finding your truth no you're not you're finding a [ __ ] ventilator I mean that that's not to say that we shouldn't have empathy we shouldn't figure out programs to give people in food deserts opportunity to eat more healthy but we should be celebrating Fitness one of the first things I say to men if I coach a young man lean into your strengths as a as a man we have Superior or more dense bone structure a lot more muscle and then testosterone gets poured over it I think any man under the age of 30 should be able to walk in into any room and know that if [ __ ] got real they could either kill and eat everybody or outrun them and it's an amazing feeling it's going to make you Kinder who breaks up fights at bars a big strong man who is Kinder who has an easier time finding mates who wants to protect others who's going to be less depressed make more money Fitness and celebrating strength is a wonderful thing especially for men it's key and then we have become so politically correct around potentially defending people the people who were the most profane used to be the most liberal Lenny Bruce Richard prior George Carlin and on the far left we become such snowflakes that anything I I think the thing that hurts people from being elected to implement many of the policies I'm promoting are as that we seen as humorless like at some point we're going to get to celebrate our differences I co-host a podcast with Caris switcher who's a lesbian I make fun of her sexual orientation I make inappropriate jokes and then there's a pause and she laughs and she gives everyone else permission to laugh I think that's really important social media has created this infrastructure where you get guardian of gotcha points by if someone says something off off color you go after him and I think it's awful and I purposely dial up the profanity because I'm like for God's sakes you know the left needs to take back profanity and vulgarity that doesn't doesn't mean you're a bad person but what you do is also matched with you know a compassion and a vulnerability because I think what you just shared is also the portal to bad influence on the internet like make your bed get fit eat right you know show up when you say you're going to show up those are all sound and solid principles it's good advice but too often that as you were sharing earlier is sort of a uh the beginning of a slide into a darker world and those influen seem to commandeer too large of a percentage of the internet and capture the minds and the fascination of these wered young men who are in search of good influence and just take what's available what's showing up when they're scrolling on their feed like why is it that those are the voices that rise to the top and a more grounded you know kind of Kinder more conscientious approach that you model isn't you know the one that's rising to the top or why aren't there more you know more people who are talking about you know the warrior mindset but from a perspective that the Ultimate Warrior never has to remove their sword from the sheath and is a protector of those that are weaker and is a compassionate Force for the community well unfortunately again again thanks I think you're being generous that we've conflated toxicity with masculinity you don't hear the term masculine femininity we've spent the last 30 or 40 years highlighting the wonderful things about feminine attributes it's a celebration it's wonderful women are doing so well more single women own a home than a single man it's now 6040 female to male College gr enroles and it's about to go two to one college grads because men drop out in urban areas now in the US women under the age of 30 are making more money than men and by the way that's wonderful we should do nothing to get in the way of that but also trying to find role models and trying to Envision a new aspirational frame of masculinity that says masculinity is amazing thing you shouldn't apologize for it you should lean into it but what does it mean and I'm writing a book on masculinity and I'm trying to figure it out and quite frankly it's really challenging you know I think of it as Loosely speaking protector provider procreator when you think about the jobs associated with masculinity a cop a farm I was at a a hotel in Seattle and a fire alarm went off and these eight Farm people showed up seven men one woman they didn't ask if there was a fire they didn't ask what was going on they're like what floor is this they got on the elevator and they went to the seventh floor that's just it if you look at 9/11 they weren't like oh this buildings coming down they just run into the building they're like our job is to protect others I think that's a great place to start for men that real masculinity is you are your job is to protect other people and it also foots to our instincts I think it's called The Carnegie Foundation gives out an award every year or awards for people who in the moment put their own physical safety at risk to save someone else they don't know it's literally the pulling people out of a burning car what you're talking about is service and I think a lot of the messaging around masculinity is about individuality it's about going out and getting yours and killing the lion and getting the car and the job it's all about kind of selfish aggrandisement yeah uh in a showy flashy sort of way to you know to kind of peacock but real masculinity is purpose-- driven and service oriented it how are you showing up for other people but where I was going with this of the 81 Awards they gave last year 77 were given to men men are more risk aggressive men will rush out into a field of combat to pull a comrade out who's shot risking their own lives women tend to be more thoughtful women tend to be like is that a good idea and there's a role for both and by the way I'm making a reductive generalization masculinity is a societal construct it's what we fill it with and a lot of women demonstrate wonderful masculinity it's not the domain of people born as men one of those fire people was a woman I go to CrossFit I mean the most impressive people in CrossFit are women and they we celebrate their strength personally I'm drawn to men who are more feminine my best friends demonstrate that kind of care that nurturing that Grace so I think where it comes off the rails is you say only men can be masculine or people born as men these are wonderful attributes what I'm suggesting is that people born as men have an easier time leaning into these things and we should celebrate them I think what you're saying around service is something I should think about because maybe that's a better frame but protector provider the majority of men still are evaluated based on their ability to provide economically and if we're going to have an honest conversation we have to have an honest conversation three and four women say economic viability is a key criteria in a mate a male mate whereas it's less than a quarter of men we just don't really care it appears well maybe a wrinkle on service is the idea of of contribution because I think self-esteem is bred through contributing are you being productive for something that's greater than yourself I did ketamine therapy on Monday and I was trying to I was trying told me more oh God have you done it no I haven't no I know some people that have though yeah so I I what led to that I call it the Burning Man effect it's like I've always been curious about burning man but I've always chickened out and I've always wanted to do camine and I was just curious about it so a friend of mine is an investor in these clinics and basically set my up my appointment while I was in Austin and it came up and I went but I was trying to write down the takeaways for me and Richard Reeves of boys and men Fame has this Great Frame and that is adding Surplus value I teach my boys I'm like you're negative value right now your mom spends a ton of time we spend a ton of money on you we give you more love than you give us you go to school this incredible infrastructure is spending time and energy to educate you I like when you become a man is when you're doing enough for other people that you're adding Surplus value you're producing more than you're taking I love that frame at some point in the service of others are you actually giving more than you're taking you know that's our econom is based on that companies that take in resources and then output more than the the cost of the resources going in I don't know how I thought of the Cy therapy but the only kind of real actional item I took away from it was like my boys kept coming up and I thought if I can love my boys more than people have loved me if I can push more of that confidence and concern and love to other people that's the real Surplus value right and that was a nice framing for me that's like I wanted to come out with some intentionality around my purpose that was what I took from it it's like I have these vessels that really are open and sponges of my time regard attention and love and if I think one of my purposes as a man is Surplus value is how can I do more of that for me them than was done for me I have a very complicated relationship with my father he wasn't very good to me or my mom but here's the thing he was much better to me than his dad was to him and I'm like okay he's checked the box in the universe he's added Surplus value but I think that's a great frame for men really think about young men the resources the government your family are Society are investing in you and at what point does it flip and you're actually adding more value than you're taking and a lot of men never get there and grow up thinking that the world is just about giving them [ __ ] and spending time and love on them I think that's a great frame for what it means to be a man I also think that's why qualitatively like what you're doing now in this chapter of your life I suspect and I'm I'm projecting is so much more meaningful to you yes it's a for-profit Enterprise Prof G media but in comparison to being an activist investor or an investment banker or just an entrepreneur in general the meaning behind it the intentionality the purpose that seems to be very clear to you gives it a sense of meaning that I would imagine contributes to your happiness and your sense of direction yeah look it's hugely rewarding I I'm not I don't want to Virtue Su too much I'm a capitalist I love money I love making money I think there's a huge Economic Opportunity and being the wides space I feel commercially as a marketing Professor I can tell you is I'm a wi heterosexual male that talks openly about his feelings there's a huge wi space for that people respond to it people respond to it and so it's a frame I make good money talking about this stuff but the stuff around struggling young men is so rewarding because it's a conversation that has been unproductive and by far the people I get the most um support for for this work are our mothers they come up and they say something along left following I have three kids two daughters and a son one daughter's in Chicago PR the other's a pen my son's in the basement vaping and playing video games it's hugely rewarding and also quite frankly it just makes me feel good it makes me feel strong it makes me feel masculine it makes me feel successful that I can influence other people and also try to be open and vulnerable about my own shortcomings I [ __ ] up so many times and I continue to disappoint myself I have huge impostor syndrome I don't know if you do ever feel like you're about to be found out all the time someone's going to break in right now I can't even believe you're sitting across from me and you know like yourself I'm an approval junkie like you know I want you to like me you know what I mean like there's there's all kinds of layers to that like I get all that but I think fundamentally it's so important to model that type of vulnerability it's you know I do it in the work that I do in the way that you show up and do that for other people is an invitation and it allows people to understand that like being vulnerable isn't a weakness it's not Kryptonite it's actually a superpower it's an invitation to let people in it's giving permission to other people to engage with their emotions and their feelings and not treat it like it's a weakness or to admit something that you're scared about makes you a failure it's also a fantastic way to live a more more rewarding life because from the age of 29 to 44 I never cried I just forgot how I didn't cry when my mother died I didn't cry when I got divorced I didn't cry when my company went chapter 11 and I was broke at the age of 40 I just forgot how and what I would advise any man is to lean into your emotions when you think something's funny learn how to laugh out loud when you find something inspiring you know really lean into God this really moves me you know when you read something you love or you see a visualization or you see this sunset or you're riding away like just [ __ ] get into it and if you feel sad don't check back on some weird screwed up sense of masculinity really lean in and feel the emotion and if you can cry because it informs what's important to you it informs what moves you it informs what you're good at otherwise you're just sort of sleepwalking through life you never really register anything and here's the fear you know life is a sense of Sensations and reward the fear is when you talk to people at the end my colleague at NYU Adam alter has done this great work around paliative care you know you're stuck in the past I struggle with anger and depression I'm in the past way too much I don't forgive myself I get very down on myself I'm a lot in the future because I'm successful and to be successful you have to be planning and sacrificing for the future but I'm never really he here like I'm already thinking about the traffic on the way home I'm already thinking should I stop it in and out and Van eyes I have a friend in Westlake I'm like I'm already kind of like halfway thinking about tonight the people I'm going to be meeting I'm thinking about my flight on Saturday I'm thinking I'm just already like in the future and the thing people regret the most you know when they're older is they just didn't lean into their relationships they didn't feel emotion they didn't you know and that's the fear my biggest fear as an atheist I'd be curious to get your I'll put it back to you my biggest fear is I get at the end I mean I believe at the end I'm going to look into my kids life eyes and know that our relationship is coming to an end I don't think anyone's going to talk me out of that my fear is I look back and go oh my God what enormous blessings Prosperity I would have never imagined people that love me and let me love them immensely but I was never there never really felt any of it and one way to put yourself in the moment is to really lean into those emotions and not like that people are really understanding people like it I'm not suggesting you cry at work there's a time and a place for emotion but people respond to it and distinct of the affirmation and accolades or reinforcement you get or don't get it informs your life it puts you in the moment cuz that's my biggest fear as I get to the end and it's like this really didn't happen it was a series of past and future but the moments were just very few so how did you make that change to go from the person who couldn't cry to leaning into your emotions was there a pivotal experience you know the seminal experience for me I think that it's very basic stu stuff and again I'm curious you think more about this than I do but the real seminal things in my life where my my mom dying just the harshness the first time you lose someone have you lost lost a parent not yet have you lost anyone close to you I really haven't okay that is just the harshest strangest experience to date when it happens the harshness of it the finality of it if we could register and really understand what death is at all before it happens we'd be so freaked out we wouldn't go outside we're purposefully wired not to really think a lot about death so when it happens you just can't imagine it it's so brutal for a lot of people I think it gives you a sense of the finite nature of life it changes your frame made me more appreciative made me more bold and courageous with my feelings to tell people how I cared about them and then the other one is the other side of the life Spectrum when my kids were born you know all of a sudden like it's no longer about me my whole life Monday through Friday was how do I make more money how do I hang out with more fabulous people how do I have more sex with hotter people and then more money and then more fabulous and then more sex and then more relevance and more act but it was like the vampire from an Anne Rice movie I could never quite be satisfied was always more [ __ ] more I want more and then when I had kids it's kind of cathartic because all of a sudden you're thinking instinctively more about someone else than you it's like my Friday used to be where am I having brunch how do I find more fabulous people and things to do now I know what I'm doing I'm going to soccer practice and and it's boring and hard for a couple years and then I find it quite relaxing but having kids and thinking about other people has been really cathartic and there's just a few moments they don't happen that often but they do happen I'll be on the couch watching a Premier League football game my boys will wander in they kind of instinctively throw their legs on your yours like it's just natural the dogs come in you know they they laugh at something and like you have that moment where you're like okay this is it I can't imagine any more this is it it's the only time in my life I've ever felt sated MH ever I mean it sounds very trite but death and birth were kind of the getting you to I think to the next phase how old are your boys 13 and 16 I started late how old are yours two stepsons 28 and 27 and then a 20-year-old daughter and a 16year old daughter oh so you're on the back nine yeah my story is a little bit different though although I haven't suffer that kind of loss I certainly have the experience of having kids and how transformative that is but you know my root to vulnerability and being in constant contact with my emotional state was formed out of difficulties and hardship I had a protracted battle with alcoholism that destroyed my life I went from somebody who was a you know insecure quiet kid figured it out by the time I graduated high school top athlete got into all the colleges all the promise in the world all the opportunities that I then squandered until I alienated you know everybody that I cared about in my life and was utterly broken and had to build my life back up again from scratch and I think that experience as painful as it was really provided me with the tools to reconstruct a new life based upon new principles you're an atheist I'm not I was introduced to some spiritual principles and tools that are now fundamental to the way that I frame my life and live my life you know I owe everything that I now have to the experience of getting sober and the community of people that have helped keep me sober and who I help keep sober and everything has kind of escalated from there but fundamentally it's about confronting your own emotions and taking inventory for your behavior and repairing the damage of your past and having a spiritual connection to something greater than yourself and and then giving it back in service to other people and I try to do that through the professional work that I do but fundamentally my first priority is to that community and to that program was there a moment though where you said okay this is it I got to get my [ __ ] together well there were lots of moments like that that didn't end up changing anything because I wasn't ready you know the elevator hadn't gone down far enough and I wasn't ready to let go so it wasn't until literally almost everything was stripped away from me and I had nowhere else to turn because I don't want to change do you like do you like changing do you like uh trying to let go of bad behavior and adopt new habits like it's not fun it's not easy and also I love drinking yeah so me too you know probably more than you but I am wired in a certain way where that wasn't going to work out for me and it was pretty clear for a pretty long time that I was heading in the wrong direction and people tried to intervene but you have to be ready for that change you have to I had to suffer I had to get to a place of suffering where the fear of change was exceeded by the pain of my current [Music] experience because I'm stubborn and I'm an alcoholic but even in sobriety you know I've weathered Financial destitution and had other kinds of challenges that have in retrospect looking back provided me with strength mhm and have been foundational um and instructive and have helped me you know everything's 2020 in the rearview mirror it all makes sense when you look backwards but at the time you know incredibly confusing and a lot of fear and a lot of you know insecurity but I think those tools and they're all just analoges for the things that you talk about like if you want self-esteem you have to perform esteemable acts on behalf of yourself on behalf of other people you have to be true to your word you have to show up when you say you're going to show up and it is this relationship with time also that building a life requires small consistent acts taken every single day like there's a compound interest economically but also just in terms of good willll and trust and all these kind of character qualities that take a long time to build and don't happen overnight especially if you've destroyed that trust or you don't feel like you're capable or you don't have the facility for self-love mhm I have another question um atheism is a source of strength for me I like the finite believing that life is finite it helps me to be a little bit more courageous with my emotions and you know I don't think this is a dress rehearsal so I it's taking fear away from it gives it prence to the moment yeah and also the people I'm so worried about being shamed by or not approving of me in a 100 years nobody I know or care about what they think of me is going to be around and just it makes me just feel less insecure and more bold but in terms of Faith why is it you needed and I think it's great but what is it about faith that's given you that kind of strength that you couldn't find elsewhere and also what is the role that you have tried to present or how have you tried to present Faith to your kids because I'm struggling with it my 13 and 16y olds have had no introduction of faith and I I think faith in spirituality religion I think actually there's some very positive aspects religion I've just always been remiss to introduce my kids to it so why is it you feel like you needed this instead of just your own facilities and two what's the role that your religion has played in your kids lives yeah those are great questions and challenging to answer I think I think the way into responding to that has a lot to do with self-will and a humility of understanding that you're really not in control of very many things and and a sense that there are more things at play that outside your ability to comprehend so I was somebody I assume much like yourself who was very driven who was very ambitious and every success that I had had as a young person was attributable to my ability to outwork everybody else in the room to show up earlier and stay later and Bridge the talent deficit Gap with a willingness and a capacity and a facility for suffering and pain pain and work mhm that took me to a certain place it got me into Stanford it made me a champion swimmer all of these things um but when alcohol entered the picture my self-will was absolutely useless in terms of addressing this problem I tried I tried I tried but every time I tried to use this facility that I had to tackle this problem the problem only got worse and the problem wasn't solved until I was willing to surrender that I actually had no control over it and that I needed to ask for help not only ask for help but accept that help and as somebody who's very self-directed asking for help and receiving help is a very confronting yeah Prospect right I had to be broken enough in order to do that but that process of surrender which is a daily practice of kind of letting go of my own sense of what I should be doing or what I think is in my best interest has actually been the most remunerative and and fulfilling and nurturing and gratifying experience that I've had and I think with that comes a an opening for awe and wonder of things that perhaps I don't understand I think as human beings we think that we can understand everything that's happening around us and I think there's a lot more going on that perhaps eludes our small brains and I find some comfort in that and that doesn't mean that I subscribe to a particular strain of religion other than to say that I'm just one person and I don't always make the best decisions on my own behalf and I've learned to bring in other people and pause when agitated and allow others to help guide me and talk about the role that you want Rel become your podcast all of a sudden we we can only do this for so long so George George Han who's who's a close friends he thinks just the world of you and he says that you both share great we both share a history of addiction yeah that's how he found you and what I'll say and this is strange but I've been thinking a lot about the ketamine therapy I did uh almost a week ago now this is the first 7-Day period I've gone I just thinking about it and haven't accidentally in 30 years where I haven't had alcohol and it's not because I had some Revelation that I was an addict or I needed to stop the literally physical taste or smell of alcohol right now is very unappealing to me and that's never happened to me before so interesting cuz I've heard talk about how you you enjoy your cocktails I'm a better version of me a little bit [ __ ] up Richard I I've got more out of alcohol than it's gotten out of me and I know how strange that sounds but I like it and I enjoy it I think I'm good at it I think I can modulate it but I might have been fooling myself but for some reason the idea of having a beer right now just makes me nauseous and I don't know if it's the same impact or effect those glp1 drugs have on you where it turns that switch off but but I drink a lot and for almost a week now I just I I I don't even want to smell alcohol that's fascinating weird right yeah maybe go you know go 30 days yeah see what it's goes you know what I mean there's this whole movement around the alcohol-free lifestyle right now I've had a couple people on the show who are advocates in this space and there's just a growing population of people who are realizing how much better their life is without it they're not itics they're not alcoholics but you know they like to go out and Tie One On on the weekend or every other weekend or whatever it is and just you reach a certain age also you're 59 yeah it's like those hangovers stick around a little bit longer it's like right yeah when you know we out of college you get go out and drink a lot next day have a Diet Coke and a Big Mac and you're fine now I feel as if I've had a battery of chemo I mean it takes me two days to yeah recover and all the research I'm read I'm sure the same research they just keep finding out it's worse and worse for you so I also recognize that my 59y old liver just can't process it the way it used to I'm trying to tone it down like I don't I do Edibles and one of the reasons I started doing Edibles is I just I enjoy the feeling of being high or a little bit intoxicated whatever and so I'm trying to tone down alcohol and I've been substituting a little bit with edibles but I'm thinking more about it recognizing that it would be hard for me to maintain the drinking I do and stay healthy at this age well you got me and George there you go corner there you go call anytime buddy I appreciate that when you want to pick up it's Scott he's going to have a drink um let's talk about a little the the new book a little bit the algebra of wealth this is interesting it all kind of starts with this equation that you have around prosperity and how to think about I mean it's really fundamentally addresses the changing workplace that's kind of happening right now it's this sort of mission statement for young people to how to think about money in this changing landscape you've seen the research where five friends who hang out together become more like each other you become the kind of average of your friends body mass index the amount of money you make your political party they all begin to converge towards the regression line that's not true of wealth at the end of your life same five people make the exact same amount of money the amount of wealth they end up with is highly variant and I made a lot of mistakes I always made a lot of money but I missed a ser series of just small strategies and behaviors to make sure I was economically secure and I think it's really important because I I say that America becomes more like itself every day and this isn't a good thing but America is a loving generous place if you have money it's a rapacious violent place if you don't so a series of behaviors and approaches and strategies that aren't that hard and they require less discipline if you start them early can lead you to Economic Security and so the basic equation is focus find your talent not your passion at NYU we have these people who come in we either invite impressive accomplished people or invite billionaires we've decided billionaires just have insight into life and they always end with the same shitty advice Follow Your Passion M and typically the guy telling you to follow your passion made his billions and iron ore smelting and my thing is find your talent find something you're really good at or you think you have an aptitude for it can't be something you don't like but most young people mistake passion for a hobby they think I'm really into sports I'm really I want to be a DJ or I want to be a model or in fashion okay just keep in mind those Industries have a 90 plus% unemployment rate and if you're really that talented you'll know at a very early age that you're meant to be the next Messi or you are really that talented my advice would be find something you're good at that has a 90 plus per employment rate and what I have found is that jobs are like asset classes the more they're invested the more human capital that goes into them the lower the return and that there's an inverse return on your career based on how sexy their career is and the example I use as a tax lawyer if you can figure out the discipline to get the certification to be a lawyer you enjoy numbers you understand the intersection between taxes and laws and how to handle a client if you could be in the top 10% of that you're always going to make a good living and if you could be in the top 1% you'll probably fly private and have a much broader selection set of mates than you deserve so your job isn't to figure out what your passion is I wanted to be an athlete like you I thought you know and the wonderful thing about UCLA is it disabuses you of any notion of being a professional athlete I knew athletes I went to school with Troy Aman and Reggie Miller you're just surrounded by Olympians I was literally the worst yeah I was literally the worst Varsity athlete at uccla but that was a blessing for me find your talent and then commit the requisite 10,000 hours hours the endurance the grit the maturity to try and become really top 1% in something that has a 90 plus per employment rate not a 90 plus perc unemployment rate you want to be an actor I don't want to crush your dreams but you better be amazing because of the 180,000 best actors in the world that are in The Saga after Union 87% of them make less than $23,000 a year and don't qualify for health insurance so you better be Glen close or you better be close to Glen Close to make a living there whereas other industries that have a 90 plus per employment rate if you're just in the top 10% even the top half you're going to make a good living and this is what I can promise you you know being great at something that pays well lets you take care of your kids lets you take care of your parents gets you prestige camaraderie people start laughing at your jokes inviting you to speak places and anything that does that for you will make you passionate about whatever it is no one grows up thinking I'm gonna be passionate about tax law but the best tax lawers I can tell you are really passionate about it because they're good at it and it pays off and I'm not saying don't pursue your dreams but have an honest conversation around what it would mean to be in the top of that field what would be require to make a good living because without Economic Security in this country your life's going to be full of anxiety and disappointment so Focus find your talent and the next things are pretty straightforward diversity or diversification where I lost a lot of my money was I was always like doubling down on my companies and that's okay when you're younger especially if it's your own business because sometimes you have any choice but the moment you have any assets start diversifying you know I've taught at a business school for 20 years I think of myself as someone who knows the best ambassadors in the world and my sum total assessment of the market is no one has any [ __ ] idea but the good news is that the market because of demographic growth because of productivity because of Technology as a whole the market is up and to the right so the S&P was up 24% last year but only seven companies were respons responsible for 70% of those gains were you smart enough to buy Nvidia I wasn't and so unless you were smart enough to pick one of the 1.4% of stocks that accelerated you had actually really meddling returns but this is the good news you don't need to be a stock picker buy the entire S&P buy an index a low cost fund it's gone up 11% a year for the last 15 years 11% a year when you're young sounds really mediocre but that means that means every 21 years your your money is going up8 times so diversify the other one is realize the benefit of time and our species has a difficult time wrapping their head around time for the majority of our our time on this planet we haven't lived past 35 so young people just can't imagine and I can give them Actuarial tables there's probably a 90 plus percent chance they're going to live another 70 maybe even 80 years and the other thing I can guarantee it's going to go really fast I mean I don't know about you that was 30 yesterday it goes really fast so if you push back on our instincts around time and also diversification you don't need to be hero and then the really hard part especially for a young person is living a little bit like a stoic saying what other people think of me isn't that important I really don't need to order a bottle of Grey Goose at a club to to impress people I really don't need a BMW at this age I need nice clothes that make me feel good but I don't really need no one is is concerned concerned with you know your [ __ ] as you are that's just try and find other means of satisfaction and self-esteem and really try to gamify savings turn try and work out a savings muscle the muscle you got to develop is a savings muscle gamify it when I was in college you talking about sports I was on the crew Team every summer if I didn't save $3,300 I wasn't re-enrolling at UCLA and so I had 12 weeks to make 3,300 bucks so we would gain gamify it I'd get together with six other guys who also didn't have any money and every day on a whiteboard we write down how much and we gamify it I lived on $73 a week I ate Top Ramen bananas and milk and I had $3,300 by the end of the summer that savings muscle mostly stuck with me I kind of lapsed out of it when I started making money and thinking I was a baller but if you can develop that savings muscle a little bit of savings when you're young diversification and then recognizing how fast time will go there are hundreds of thousands of Union and government employees that never make more than $100,000 but because of for savings plans and a little bit of discipline they retire Millionaires and so hope you hit it big with a podcast hope you sell a movie deal hope your company gets acquired if that's great fine but if it doesn't make sure you're going to have a minimum amount of economic viability the good news is I think I know how to get you rich the bad news is the answer slowly and it requires a certain amount of discipline early and this is do as I say not as I do because I was made a lot of money but between divorce the great financial recession and the dot bomb and always spending a lot of money because I was a baller and at some point I was going to make a lot of money I just knew it I always increased my spending to my earnings and I ended up at 42 when my first kid came marching out of my girlfriend I didn't have that much money and it was terrifying I'm 42 I've had all of this quote unquote curb retail success everyone thinks I'm so successful and I'm not sure I'm going to be able to stay in New York and put my kid in private school because I've just ended up with a lot less money that was emasculating that was humiliating if I just been a little smarter a little bit more disciplined I wouldn't had that anxiety so this is sort of a memo to myself if I could go back and time saying this isn't a book for people are economically insecure need to cut up their credit cards you know that's Susie Orman this is about someone who has a job has some Talent knows how to make some money not a lot but knows how to make some money and a series of behavior that will be your base in your plan B what is the advice that you would give to somebody who's not a young person who's starting out who's looking for that type of guidance to set them up for long-term success but is instead somebody who's in midlife and they've had a job for a long time maybe they have a family perhaps they own their home maybe they rent but they wake up at 40 and they can pay their bills maybe they're living check to check but they're on fulfilled they're in a job that is soul draining Soul killing and they're just not sure how long they can keep doing it there's just a lack of fulfillment and purpose and they're looking for a different way so first off I woke up at 42 with not a lot of money so 42 is Young you don't really you don't think it's young at 42 but that probably means you're living another 40 maybe 50 years so it's by no means too late to start you might have to adjust your expectations around how much money you're going to end up with but you know wealth isn't a function of how much you make it's a function of how much you spend and you know save I mean there's just no getting around it if you have kids and dependence the aspirational thing here would be to say Richard you know take a chance find your passion go out do what you want to do be happy you know it's easy to say when I'm not paying your rent yeah you know it's just there's a certain reality in a c tough one I'm not sure I have a silver bullet what I would say is one of the keys is having a great partner and saying you know kids don't talk about this but 70% of divorce filings are by women and it's usually economics It's usually the guy loses his job declares bankruptcy or has some sort of mental breakdown you have to have a conversation or maybe just get lucky to make sure that you have a real partner if you're married in the economic livelihood of your house because if you're not happy she's not going to be happy or he's not to be happy and your kids aren't going to be happy I mean I sort of had this conversation with my partner we were living in New York and we had two boys and to put them in prek and for my wife to continue working we were going to have to spend about $100,000 a year because we're narcissist and wanted them get in the right schools I'm like okay the tax is in New York that means we need $180,000 in pre-tax income for our kids to go play with blocks all we had a three-bedroom apartment we needed three-bedrooms was $118,000 a month and we could downgrade but in New York living in Manhattan you really can't downgrade that much and so what we decided was I'm going to move to Florida we're going to move to delway beach where your parents can be involved in our kids lives so we have built-in child care I'm going to move from $188,000 a month to $5,500 a month I'm going to save 133% a year in taxes and I'm going to start saving a [ __ ] ton of money and when I say I mean we we're on board with this she was my partner in it we're on board with this we're going to start putting way two three 5 10 grand a month and then through no fault of our own the bull market took over and just literally threw us into space everything just sort of took off from there but I would say an open and honest conversation with your partner if you're married if you're single you can take some chances and say [ __ ] it I'm starting a podcast or I'm going to go be a scuba instructor or I want I've always wanted to write you can take those sorts of risks with a family I think it's really difficult and I would say the only thing I would suggest is really be open with your partner about what you're feeling and what you're going through and say is there a lifestyle Arbitrage is there a move are there certain sacrifices we can make as a decision together that takes some pressure off of me such that maybe I can start to investigate things that aren't if they're not joyous are less arduous on you because I was talking to this famous actually it's a podcast I was talking to Chris Cuomo and he' just been fired from CNN and he was trying to figure out his next thing thing and he's like I really let my family down I really let my family down and that's the hardest part about all this I'm like dude I don't know your wife I don't know your kids and I'm almost entirely certain what they want is for you to be happy you know he's this big handsome Larger than Life character I'm like when you're happy I bet your household just burns bright and when you're not happy I bet it's not a great place to be so stop putting that on your family and you and all that I'm like just find something you don't hate that and I bet your partner would be so supportive of anything you want because the money is great but if one of you is really unhappy oh gosh that's an I mean you're you're married right m i mean one of you is unhappy that's rough and if one of your kids is unhappy the whole thing I comes crumbling down right so I think it's about partnership and being open and honest with someone else but there's just no getting around it I don't know how to be economically secure [Music] unless you're born wealthy without working really hard from the age of 22 to 42 I did nothing but work you know it doesn't sound aspirational it cost me my hair cost me my first marriage and it was worth it I got the currency and skills to get Economic Security at some point I I just don't think there's a free lunch I find young people are totally unrealistic I call it the myth of balance I mean you can have it all but you can't have it all at once When I Survey my kids I mean my students I say how much money do you expect to me making they expect to be in the top one percentile of income earning households 80% of them by the time they're 30 and then they talk about balance balance in the context of an expectation they want balance they don't want to work that hard they want balance they want Hobbies they want to spend time with their family and their dogs I'm like okay unless you're born rich I don't know how to do that I just I don't know anyone that successful who didn't for a good 10 or 20 years work pretty damn hard maybe Beyonce but Beyonce is supposed to work 60 hours a week so I'm sure she did yeah there's a there's a certain level of obsession that kind of contravenes all the negativity around hustle culture I mean we should all be healthy we should have a healthy relationship with the work that we do I'm an all-in guy I I really don't know how to do it any other way so it's disingenuous to you know kind of talk about that when I'm practicing it differently and I I've improved and I'm better now but when you're young to live that stoic lifestyle where you're keeping your overhead as low as possible and you can Flex some discipline to really go all in on something s may sound on paper terrible but it's actually pretty nourishing you can learn a lot and I think the skills that you learn about your own capacity and your own potential are as instructive and informative as whatever you're learning in the workplace well you were an athlete so I was a Morgan Stanley I was I wasn't as well educated I don't think I was as skilled as my peers it was an analyst Class of 73 kids so I decided I wanted to lean into my strengths I moved in with my mom I started saving money because I wanted to go to graduate school every week on Tuesday Morning I'd go to work at 9:00 a.m. and I'd stay till Wednesday at 6:00 p.m. yeah I'm like I got no one to go home too that's hardcore I don't have a girlfriend my mom's not going to miss me and I'm physically at Le right now I could do it no problem one cup of coffee maybe grab 15 minutes 30 minutes sleep at 4 in the morning the next morning and I sent a signal to my colleagues that I was I was here to play and the blessing of an athlete and everyone should try and find this environment is that I rode crew at one point when you're rowing the air going down your esophagus feels like fire you can't feel your legs you literally start seeing black spots cuz you start to pass out you're a swimmer I mean you had some of that same and that's at 800 M and every time you make it to 2,000 to push yourself like that is such an incredible gift to give be given the opportunity to really be forced to push yourself as a gift because what you realize is when you get divorced you think I can't handle this anymore I can't handle it your business is failing I just [ __ ] can't deal with this or you feel you feel tired what you realize is about the moment you think you're going to give up you're about a third of the way to your limit and it builds real incredible confidence and grid and endurance and I think those skills really serve people well and another piece of advice to young people whether it's Fitness Sports working ridiculously hard finding something super hard and really try and test your limits because it gives you a sense of confidence like wow I just had no idea what I was capable of and it's a real asset the rest of your life you're starting a small but that the lows are so low in in starting your own business like oh my God I'm so full of [ __ ] this isn't working I'm spending so much money I'm letting everybody down you know the L can get so low if you've had the opportunity to really test your emotional physical limits you're like I'm fine I'm going to get through this it's absolutely not um the limit but I think that's a blessing for a young person yeah 100% I think in in the discussion around people who are un filed in in in midlife there's also the Silver Lining that the world is different than it was when you and I graduated from college there are all these new opportunities that the internet has afforded us to self-crafted translated into this permission to just quit your job especially if you're married and you have a more you have all these responsibilities kids Etc but to flex that discipline and that you know kind of stoic perspective and apply it to how to your time management like we're all wasting time now more than ever with our phones Etc like where is that extra hour or two hours that you can carve out either daily or weekly to explore what it is that gets you excited and yeah and just kind of begin to explore that not because you're going to quit your job but because it makes you feel good or it's fulfilling in some way and those threads you know I think there is a spirituality in that if you give that energy like stuff starts to show up and opportunities present themselves and perhaps at some moment it will be a career path for you or some kind of fulfilling side hustle that you can build into your life but to do it responsibly especially when you have dependence I think is important in this culture of like you know reinvent your life overnight nobody successful that I know built anything meaningful or successful in the way that it gets portrayed in the media and on social media it takes a long time and you have to be willing to you know gge yourself and to weather that that you know that Journey something men are not good at lean on your friends I got Financial commitments but I'm looking for something to do right C crowdsource some ideas it's really hard to read the label from inside of the bottle and Mano has put up this front that my masculinity is tied to my [ __ ] sew together I'm financially secure and I'm happy and everything's great I think developing a circle of friends and mentors or just you know a kitchen cabinet to say you know I don't like what I'm doing I got to still make money what you were saying I you know Workshop some things one or two hours spend some time see if there's money in it see if you've enjoyed as much as you thought maybe will tell you by the way don't quit your day job it's hard to find another job without a job whatever it might be but someone who can just ask you really hard questions and also might be able to help you you know what I've been doing I've been doing this cool thing over here or you know what you would be good at I never in a million years would have thought of doing podcasting it's like no what I just never it definitely wasn't on the Whiteboard I never I didn't know what it was the first podcast I listened to was a podcast I was on with Caris swier I had never listened to a podcast but putting yourself in a position of success talking to people also people love if you have good friends they like you asking them for help right I need to find ways to make more money or I need to find something else like you have any what do you think you have any ideas what what did you do like and we have this weird sense of masculinity that If You're vulnerable like that you're taking away from their impression you or something like that I think people like being asked for help and I mean they just the weirdest [ __ ] like you know talking about go dark here men's suicide something like a huge portion of men who commit suicide no one around them had any idea yeah they had no idea they were even struggling have you seen this like this most horrific video showing the last video in pictures of these men and they're usually like they look happy so your own ability to reach out and ask other people for help finally in the last 10 years I now don't make a single business or personal decision of any importance without checking and with at least two or three people I mistook leadership for you have a plan you come into a room you tell them what you think and then you advocate for your strategy and you go you never ask for people help you never say I don't know I don't I don't know what I'm doing I'm like insecure about this I don't know I would never ask anybody for help until really until I was in my 40s I wish I'd figured that out earlier why is that so hard you know I'm so indoctrinated Because of You Know My Own struggles and the modalities that I've found to help me that it's second nature to talk about what's bothering me or my weaknesses or my failure or to solicit input and to have a board of advisers and all kinds of different people that I call for different reasons it's a reflex now but it wasn't always that way I've been doing this for a long time but I've been doing it for so long that I think I've lost touch with why it's so challenging for so many particularly men to raise their hand well I'm seeing a bunch of my fraternity Brothers tomorrow night and it'll be a series of controlled boasting yeah my wife calls it super dupers you shake their hand super I'm great you know it's just a front you know it's all [ __ ] horseshit yeah I did this I bought this stock I'd have my best mother check comes everyone fighting for the check no one would say you know what my kid needs braces can someone else I mean no one would ever say that right it's all just a set of like check my [ __ ] out right I think because men are evaluated based on their economic vitality and having their act together that they're just very loathed to reach out for help I think the blessing of the addiction Community or a i we call it the recovery Community is they just put that [ __ ] aside my sense of that Community is First Signal you're struggling you reach out to other people first signal and that's a gift I would bet a disproportionate number of men never develop that skill women are much better at it than men they lean on their social networks I mean we're dealing with a situation right now where men are now 77% of suicides and going up we're going to have four to one male to female suicides how much of that do you think is is tied to this loneliness epidemic that we're seeing I think loneliness so I'm going to flex now I'm talking to the Department of Homeland Security about Ai and they're like okay what are the threats of AI is it it going sentient is it AI tested um misinformation is it self-repairing super weapons I'm like okay I think in the short run Miss misinformation AI tested misinformation is a threat if I were Putin I'd be flooding The Zone with misinformation making Biden seem a little bit older you know I think that's the short-term threat the long-term threat is tapping into men's loneliness one out of seven men don't have a single friend one out of four men can't name a friend the number of men who see their friends every day in high school has been cut in half so they don't see their friends they don't have romantic relationships with sheris great guard rails the only reason I stopped smoking pot every day was my girlfriend said if you don't get your [ __ ] together I'm going to stop having sex with you right that's a tremendous motivator for a young man if I hadn't had the prospects of a romantic relationship if I didn't have the guardrails of going into the office every day which a lot of men don't I just think I would have smoked pot and watch BL of the Apes all day long right that was a good life for me I enjoyed that so so many men have now sequestered from people and guard rails to this mix of algorithms and screens that they're becoming very lonely and I said the scenario I see as the biggest threat to the Homeland in defense is if I were an adversary or a bad actor I would identify the two or three million very lonely men who serve in the armed services or at our ports or our critical infrastructure and I would develop a very sophisticated network of AI girl friends that start a relationship with them and make them feel good it can be three 3 months 6 months 12 months send them pictures increasingly erotic you're funny like the movie Her MH and get them more and more involved and all you need 0.01% of them would be 3,000 of them and at some point you flip it and say you know what real leadership and real men do is they fight against the Tyranny what is the Tyranny The Tyranny is your own government and when this box comes into the port I don't want you to check it or you're on the aircraft carrier strike for off the coast of the Mediterranean turn off this switch don't turn it on turn it off I mean I think the next big threat or soft issue will be a group of radicalized young men who are susceptible to AI algorithms and are so lonely that they start to engage with AI relationships specifically AI girlfriends that will essentially be in a position to radicalize them and instruct them on Behavior I mean I don't think terrifying I don't think we're going to have Skynet it'll replace jobs but every Innovation and Technology destroys jobs in the short run and then over the long term it creates more jobs as will AI but there's so many lonely young men who don't have any interaction with people and they become very susceptible to anything or any platform or any algorithm giving them a sense of selfworth I literally see that as the biggest uh defense secret no one's going to take us on kinetically we spent $800 billion dollar no one can attack us I think we're going to figure out Hamas I think we're going to figure figure out over time Russia and Ukraine I think the threat is within I think this lonely young men in concert with AI is a huge threat subtle Progressive and percious 100% manipulation yeah just Moment by moment they get huge reward from it nice relationship they trust each other you start thinking it's real and and impossible to police yeah sending information read this article I love this article what do you think now read this one constantly testing it a million different ways see how you get test millions of times over and over every second how you get them further and further and further down this path towards radicalization that is not a good picture yeah is there an antidote to that getting people out into the real world detached and untethered from their phones relationships everything from church to nonprofit work to third spaces to Athletics to leagues me in up men so they're more attractive to women and they can have an easier time getting Partnerships putting them in more situations where they develop friendships I'm a fan of national service you know who doesn't have the teen depression we have Israel they all serve in the same uniform it gives them a sense of purpose they meet friends they meet mates they meet potential future business Founders and co-founders and they have a sense of purpose serving in the agency of something else we got to get these kids out of the house we got to get them making friends we got to get them engaging in the messy ugly business of of real world and rejection and friendships and I mean we're mammals put an Orc in a tank alone see what happens it goes crazy I think we're raising a generation of men who are going just going be increasingly psychotic and crazy that was ugly that is like yeah it's so depressing that was ugly I think you're a change agent uh and I'm curious about your thoughts as somebody who's working with young people who's mentoring up close and AAR what is the best way to instigate positive change in an individual you probably know more about this night what I'll tell you is what I do when I coach a young man I try to take on and it's not a lot but I try to take on two young men every six months and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't and what is the differentiator what's the difference between the person who can hear the good information or receive the positive influence and put it into action versus the person who's resistant or struggles well the first thing is they've got to want to do it I would say a third of the time they don't show up or they miss it I'm like you're not ready you don't want this your dad told you to do it you know calm me when you're serious about it whatever it is you need to hit bottom or I don't know you can't instill willingness so I I spent a lot of time thinking about that like how do you make somebody more willing short of Performing some kind of inception they have to they have to be in a position of receptivity that's often related to suffering I I don't know how to do that they either got to show up serious about and the first thing I do it's a series of very tactical lessons I say unlock your phone I'm going to look at your screen time and I'm not going to make any judgments I watch porn I spend too much time on Tik Tok so I'm not going to judge you and then I say I find 8 to 12 hours a week easily in screen time coinbase stupid [ __ ] trading stocks un Robin it I'm like we're going to reallocate that time into three things we're going to re allocated into fitness we're going to get really [ __ ] strong or much stronger right and there's apps that don't cost any money or cost a little bit of money you know my gift to you I'm going to give you this $10 a month right you know app whatever it is and I'm going to track your Fitness we're going to eat a little cleaner right we're going to spend three hours maybe four hours a week just on Fitness because you're going to feel better about yourself and you're going to be stronger and it's going to help your mental Outlook you got to start making some money I don't care what it is is door Dasher Uber driver I don't care what it is you have to start making some money the best way to make a lot of money is to start making some money some money right away you got a smartphone you can make money it's a full employment economy right you're not too good to whatever it is work at CVS whatever it is you got to make some money even if it's 50 100 bucks whatever is 200 bucks a week got to start making some money because you'll get a taste for the Flesh of money money's wonderful right you're not going have to ask your parents for all this [ __ ] or you're going to feel a little bit better about yourself and the third thing is you got to get every day out and be in the agency and Company of strangers right church group nonprofit voter registration writing class a league go play tennis at the park where they have round Robins where you meet whatever it is you have to be in the company of strangers and when you're with strangers you got to be supportive and nice and introduce yourself and and you're going to be shocked how many nice people you meet out there who like you don't like you whatever it might be but we're going to get fit we're going to make a little bit of money and we're going to be around other people and that's where we start you know I don't know how to do goals I don't know I mean I'm not like that or tracking I'm like like this is about sweat it's about money in the company other people does that advice apply to the the parents who have the teen who's in the basement playing video games and vaping cuz I don't know about you Scott but sometimes those people have to hear it from somebody else other than their parent the parent is often challenged and the the advice doesn't land in the same way as like you know your buddy you know comes over and is much cooler than you no matter how cool you are my kids my especially my 16-year-old is more inclined to take advice from you than from me right now yeah and and vice versa that's exactly right and that's the way it is and it probably should be that way we have a healthy rebellious Instinct such that it's easier for us to leave the pack when the time comes to leave the pack where we start thinking our parents are idiots it just happens especially with men and it's quite frankly it's healthy so there's studies showing that the most impactful thing on your kids your sons is their friends and also your friends fathers and not what you say but how you model it what I figured out is once boys kind of hit 13 they don't listen to anything you say the best you can do is model I try to get my kids to be you know good manners so I I'm really conscious of my table manners when I'm around my boys the first thing when visitors show up I run out to the car and I grab their luggage and I asked them to help me I think you got to model it but there's what you're saying is a proven phenomena boys are much more inclined to listen to their friends and their friends dads and parents than you so just trying to surround them with good positive role models and also my 16-year-old said he loves we have this friend Tom Tom Clark he said I just love Tom he's the coolest guy and Amelia I just got a little jealous and a little upset and I thought you know we should really vacation with that family cuz he's a good man he's a good role model he knows my son likes him and he's he's going to have an easier time getting through to him important things so and also I think with parents what I tell parents when they reach out I'm like forgive yourself what I found is that if you want to believe in nature over nurture just have two kids you know I don't know how yours are mine the only thing I know about having having a second kid is you know it's going to be totally different yeah you realize they they come out who they are oh my gosh and you guide and put the guard rails up and you know try to exert a good influence on them but they pretty much come out in a certain way baked and that's not going to change well like Michelle Obama said they come to you and the best description I've heard is you're not an engineer you know an engineer the Sheep you're a herder you get to decide where they graze you can point them in a direction you get to decide what they eat but the Sheep comes to you I mean my 16-year-old when he was a kid he would come into my room in the morning and he would say dressed say Dad let's make a plan I like okay where are the cameras was like something out of a Hallmark C easy nice sweet my younger one is a terrorist constantly assessing the household for vulnerability so he can strike when we're at our weakest he is just a terror but at the same time it's like owning a stock the lows are lower a volatile stock but the highs are higher he like is so funny so crazy so bold in with his emotions and so loving they're just different people and we just haven't treated them that much differently so when one of them isn't doing well and it's hard to tell your partner this or I tell the parents this forgive yourself because yeah you're important and you can shape stuff but you know the only thing I found with my boys you you you give them the advice you can you give them the help you can but the only thing that's really fixed any real problems they faced is time and I just see it brings the house down when kids aren't doing well it just brings the house down and it's like the parents don't know what to do they're beside them themselves and the first thing I say I have a couple friends who are really strugg with their kids I'm like first thing you got to forgive yourself you're doing your best you're a good person you're doing your best it's tough when the kid is struggling it's really hard to think about anything else brings the house down yeah you're so good on on tech and and your kind of predictions and your 10,000 foot view on you know Trends I would be remiss in not asking a question that I'm personally invested in which is how do you see the current and future state of of podcasting like what's your sense of what this ecosystem is kind of all about right now and where is it heading in a way that maybe we you know is counterintuitive I don't know if it's counterintuitive but podcasting sort of in many ways represents where America's headed in a bit of a negative way and that it's its income inequality gone crazy there's 1.7 million podcasts I would bet the top 500 do 98% of the revenue and 120% of the profits yeah I would think it might even be more skewed than that yeah well Joe Rogan does 190 million downloads he's number one and a really good podcast in the top 100 does two or three million I mean it just drops off a cliff yeah and then you know I would bet 99.9% of podcasts are not self- sustaining so I mean do as I say not as I do going into podcasting get psychic reward for it use it to Market something else but to think you're going to make a living in podcasting just be clear that you better be in the top 0.01% because it's very difficult it's a small business you know a successful podcast does several million in Revenue but it's a very profitable business once you get to that point and the thing as a medium it's not only growing but its cpms are going up because the thing about the medium the medium is the message like I can tell how someone has been introduced to me based on the way they behave if someone high-fives me I know they've seen a video if someone comes up and wants to have or sends me a really long email or they come up and they hold my hands they look into my eyes I know they've read something I've written that has resonated when someone comes up to me I'm curious what this happens to you and they start speaking to you as if you know them oh it's a podcast and they'll say often times like oh you don't know me because you're in their ears you're physically in their ears typically when they're doing something intimate walking their dog hanging out with their their spouse making breakfast they feel like they're your friend and that's the most rewarding thing about podcasting is you just have friends over it's a parasocial relationship and it's very intimate and there's a sense of trust and friendship even if it's imagined that is projected onto you so I have that experience a lot and it's it's very gratifying because it's like you do know me I'm showing up as who I am I think it's fantastic and I think it's it makes it a very unique form of infotainment right it's portable you can do something else while you're doing it and the intimacy and the trust that's built with the host I think is is also something that's tremendously unique in the media landscape that I'm not sure the kind of advertising landscape around podcasting has fully like acknowledged or recognized like it's very different like when Tom broka is delivering the news and then they cut to an ad he's not endorsing the product that ad is running independent of anything that host read overs yeah and so in podcasting when a host says Hey listen I found this product I think it's great you know and here's why and there's that implicit trust that's been built over many years yeah there's much more value in that that I don't know if it's totally appreciated and I also think at the same time podcasting advertising is tremendously underpriced in terms of marketing spend and it's confusing to me why Fortune 500 companies larger Enterprises that have huge marketing budgets continue to deploy those resources on television advertising and all kinds of other nonsense that doesn't convert when they could take a fraction of that and deployed against podcasts that are host Le and speaking to the specific demographic that that organization is trying to reach just seems like a better plan to me and the companies that get it really get it and they're building amazing uh companies you know on the shoulders of podcasters uh but it still feels like it's a niche thing yeah it's look it's a small business right now but it's growing 12% a year there's very few mediums outside of search and soal that are growing double digits in a media landscape where people are cutting back media spending so you set up a media company on probably I don't know half a million million $2 million investment for you to set up a TV show or a TV station or a music label or I mean you have been able to set up a a media company at a fairly like and you could probably pay as you go and invest as you go I mean I've been doing this for 11 years you know started original gangsters yeah I mean I've been doing it a long time and it was just you know me and my stepson you know running the whole thing it wasn't like this out of the gate like this just happened very incrementally over time but you have traditionally in media you just couldn't do that you didn't have access you couldn't you couldn't be on ABC I mean you just there was like three channels or to start a newspaper to start a magazine took real like took just so much money took so much so I I do think that if you're really good at what you do I write books that shit's hard podcasting I mean this is what you've surrounded yourself with smart people and you're creating a thick layer of innovation on top of it but this is just you being you you're a naturally curious guy and you respond authentically like and you make money doing that you make money doing that yeah now you know why I'm waiting for someone to break the door down and tell me to stand step away from the microphone that's just a gift right it's an Incredible Gift incredible change my life change yours pretty yeah well I appreciate you man I I got to let you go but um I think you're a real service you know I I think your message is really important and there are so many people who are in need of good advice and solid mentorship and the fact that you do that digitally and in person with the clarity of thought and and in this mission-based way that you do it I think is really worthy of note and I just want you to know that like I acknowledge you for that and uh I'm at your service I think it's it's it's a fantastic thing so wi in your sales my friend that means a lot coming from me I feel the same way I started looking at your stuff I think that especially you're um I know you're impacting people when they really they really need it and I mean let's just take a moment to you know just realize how just ridiculously [ __ ] lucky we are you know to get to do this kind of thing and make some money at it it's very rewarding and just hearing you talk about it it makes me reflect on you know my blessings that's a nice moment so anyways thanks and congrats on your success yeah thanks man come back and uh talk to me again sometime we'll do all right have fun with Bill Maher well cheers peace thanks man that's it for today thank you for listening I I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation to learn more about today's guest including links and resources related to everything discussed today visit the episode page at Rich roll.com where you can find the entire podcast archive as well as podcast merch my books Finding Ultra voicing change in the plant power way as well as the plant power meal planner at meals. ritual.com if you'd like to support the podcast the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple podcasts on Spotify and on YouTube and leave a review and or comment supporting the sponsors who support the show is also important and appreciated and sharing the show or your favorite episode with friends or on social media is of course awesome and very helpful and finally for podcast updates special offers on books the meal planner and other subjects please subscribe to our newsletter which you can find on the footer of any page at Rich roll.com Today's show was produced and engineered by Jason Cameo with additional audio engineering by Kale Curtis the video edition of the podcast was created by Blake Curtis with assistance by our creative director Dan Drake portraits by Davey Greenberg graphic and social media assets courtesy of Daniel CIS thank you Georgia for copywriting and website management and of course our theme music was created by Tyler Patt Trapper Patt and Harry mathys appreciate the love love the support see you back here soon peace plance [Music] namaste [Music]

Channel: Rich Roll

Views: 1,019,835

Keywords: rich roll, rich roll podcast, self-improvement podcasts, education podcasts, health podcasts, wellness podcasts, fitness podcasts, spirituality podcasts, mindfulness podcasts, mindset podcast, vegan podcasts, plant-based nutrition

Id: 4qpqmyfxDj4

Length: 113min 28sec (6808 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 15 2024