Scott Galloway: Why I'm selling my American stocks

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Old people are basically raping our economy for the last thirty or forty years it needs to stop

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Scott galloway Scott galloway

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Scott galloway is a professor at nyu stern school of business the howard stern of the business world

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we have a little shtick for you today we wanna ask you the 10 spiciest burning questions today that we had

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wrong time to give up edibles far away I am living large and I love it I am so good at spending money I spend money like a fifties gangster just diagnosed with ass cancer

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Scott you wanna get into this sucker let's go

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how honest do you want me to be is this offend people negative comments making sure that people really believe I'm not running for president based on my answers like are we going to all salsa no chip here what are we doing

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alright so you did this post the other day which was pretty hilarious you said I finally know what it feels like to be an attractive woman because I'm at davos and everyone's looking down at my chest and deciding if they're gonna talk to me or not it was great I loved your davos stuff you actually said something amazing you're like I don't even wanna be here I'd rather be at home with my kids and I thought that was awesome but what I wanna know is when you're around all these incredibly successful people people who are actually like in the illuminati who had the most gravity towards them who were you drawn to

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oh hands down governor newsom wow I walked down there's this in the congress hall first off I haven't been back to davos in twenty seven years I peaked early like I came out of the gate strong and then divorce,.com implosion great financial recession my career went sideways for ten or fifteen years so it's taken me twenty seven years to get back to davos and I'm walking around I'm like I'm not running for office I'm not raising money I don't have I'm not pitching anything why the am I here and my favorite moment I walked down into the main area of the congress hall gavin newsom was walking around like I'm the president and everyone believed him he had an entourage he that guy has such star power and this was the nicest moment for me because I'm gestured for other people's affirmation he's walking with an entourage he spots me in the corner of his eye and he comes over to me and he hugs me and he says keep doing what you're doing governor newsom has that star power hands down star power on the other side of the spectrum I saw this old man with a pod belly walking around desperate to find someone to talk to and no one was interested and it was lindsey graham and that gave me a lot of joy

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did you you know you're you're you're incredibly successful you're incredibly influential but when you're at davos you're around like literally the people controlling the world the most famous powerful people on earth was there anything that you learned

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I don't think I was able to discern differences or draw anything conclusions around these type of people the things I walked away from davos with is that the last time I was there in '99 was about e commerce and the us brand was capitalism consumption and bill clinton now it's about ai everyone was talking about ai and it's about the american brand is chaos coercion and I don't know compliance I I just I find the us brand has fallen so far so fast I came away from davos unsettled about how unsettled the world is right now but I don't think I drew any I personally and people hate this the billionaires I know I know about a dozen are actually really good people the bernie sanders elizabeth warren like you can't be a billionaire unless you're a bad person well okay elizabeth warren you're 20,000,000 does that mean you're only a fiftieth as bad but you're 20 times worse than a millionaire I don't buy the rich people are bad I have generally found that distinct of the epstein files which I understand gives people the impression that once men get to this. They feel like they're no subject to the rules I think that's a really interesting discussion I personally have found that billionaires are generally very high character people because the key to being really successful is to create allies along the way such that you're put in a room of opportunities when you're not physically there

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that's well said you what was the line that newsome said and should we all steal that line because I feel like that was the universal smooth guy line just going up to somebody and say keep doing what you're doing how does that not apply to any situation with anybody I'm gonna use that everywhere

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he seems so genuine he I've been on his pod I know he likes me I know my works had influence on him he's doing this big initiative around boys and young men but I gotta be honest it just felt great to have that sort of recognition but oh my god that guy is the definition the manifestation of riz

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man I saw I saw him on like a basketball podcast it was it was him and like two or three black dudes and he was talking about like he like what do they call it code switching and he like talked about like growing up with like mac and cheese or something like that

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I was like you have some wonder bread they're like wonder bread

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he's like

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yeah man and that clip went super viral of like you know if you hate him you're like he's faking the funk if you like him you're like he's just being so real you know that's how everything goes

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he's you know he owned a he owned a winery called plumpjack he's literally wider than ted the ted conference like that guy couldn't get any wider he's wearing like nautica and dockers just you should just lean into that

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hey one quick thing so Scott as you could see in this episode has this ability to compress like ten years of wisdom into one sentence it's almost hard to let it sink in and so the team at hubspot sponsor of today's episode actually went through all four times that he's been on our show and took all the best stuff and put it in one place so anything he's talked about for wealth building for power for life advice his predictions what moves markets it's dense it's a document it's available now it's totally free if you're ambitious and you enjoy hearing scott's thoughts I think you'll get a lot out of it the link is in the description below alright back to this episode question question number two alright this is this is a good one you're a grown man you got a $100,000,000 you've got fame you've got family you've got influence what is it that you're still hungry for that money has not been able to buy so far

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I wanna launch good men I feel like I have a deficit I think I've taken more from the country and from taxpayers and from the freedoms I've enjoyed than I've given back so I wanna get to a. Of surplus value and like my purpose my purpose is I wanna I wanna raise good men I wanna know that when I'm towards the end that I've raised really confident loving men

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did you always think in terms of purpose

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no I mean me put it this way my purpose I had two purposes I wanted to be really rich and really awesome so I could take care of my mom and be more attractive to strange women that was my purpose the first forty years of my life

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and so you you have this perspective flip in your forties you know if you're influential to a bunch of guys today who was that for you like who influenced you to just kind of change the way you're approaching things or shift your mindset or you know change your your approach to life

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I've had I've been really lucky I've had a lot of male mentors in my life that have you know they usually say one thing that really sticks with me but the the big pivot for me in my life hands down was when my mind got my mom got really sick and I couldn't take care of her that just sort of changed everything for me and that was money as a means of protecting people not of having an awesome life and it just sort of changed everything for me because up until that. Life was prom star wars getting fucked up with friends and then this happens to everybody don't if it's happened to the two of you but when someone you know and love gets really sick or you know and loves you a great deal gets sick and dies it just kinda for me it kinda changed everything and not necessarily in a good way I still feel like you know I'm a middle aged man who hasn't gotten over the death of his mother and also I mean it sounds very passe but it's true the death of my mother and the birth of my boys and it wasn't a hallmark channel moment when my boys were born I'm like I need to make more money and I it was 2008 I'd lost everything and I just felt this like it wasn't angels singing and bright lights by the way I don't think men should be in the delivery room it's gross bring bring me the thing cleaned up with a bow in its hair while I'm smoking a cigarette I I just think it's just so woke and stupid that they allow men into the delivery room but anyways I felt shame I'm like I've been so successful I've had so many blessings and I'm near broke and now I'm responsible for this little science experiment but it really rattled me it was also very motivating so it's no one person it was very birth and death as they're supposed to be have been the biggest influences on my life

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that's a great answer

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that's pretty awesome did you say you stopped worrying about making money in your forties

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we talked about this I decided that once I got to a number from 25 to 45 maybe 48 I did nothing but work I did nothing but work I wasn't a good person I wasn't going out of my way to save the whales I wasn't investing relationships I wasn't I'm just like when when again going back to when my mom got sick and I couldn't take care of her I was so traumatized by a capitalist society that doesn't protect people who are under insured I'm like the only thing can control is how hard I work and you can't decide to be economically secure but you can decide how much of your own time and energy I don't remember anything from the age of 25 to 45 other than working there was like a couple trips to hawaii I think but other than that I don't remember anything but working but I decided alright if I get to this number and the problem is your number keeps going up and we talked about this heading our last podcast I said when I hit this number I'm done and I'm gonna do two things whenever I meet with my financial advisors and I do this once a year they tell me this is your net worth and if it's above that number which it has been the last twelve years because it's been an amazing economy I do one or two things with the incremental number above that I either spend it I love to spend money I'm great at it I am so good at spending money I spend money like a fifties gangster just diagnosed with ass cancer I am living large and I love it or two and then anything above that I give away and I don't do it because I'm philanthropic I do it because it makes me feel masculine and american and

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have you ever said that line before I spend what do you say I spend money like a fifties gangster who just got diagnosed with ass cancer I have to know is that a line you've ever said before or did that just

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not more than two or 300 times sean I save all my stuff for you

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I mean you are so

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the best way I was on ben's I was on ben stiller's podcast and I said that and he was like oh did you know I actually had ass cancer I had my prostate removed uncomfortable paws uncomfortable paws ben's been very public he had he he fought and beat prostate cancer anyways

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did he spend money lavishly when he had it

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I don't know what his approach to money is but I think that yeah I I I think a finite nature of life or sense of that I get that power from my atheism I think if you're this is I mean this is a. 1% problem but I can't stand it I have rich friends that don't know how to spend their money or they don't give it away it's like what the you doing enjoy your life

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well is question number three perfect lead in you said something that we thought was genius we've talked about it many times you said america is the best place to earn money and europe is the best place to spend money and it got us thinking about spending money what can we learn from you we said what else is the best way to spend money to improve quality of your life what have you actually found is good bang for your buck spend it and it improves the quality of your life

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are we talking about a lot of money

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whatever comes to mind when I say that yeah you can talk about

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oh hands down a private plan hands down it lowers the bar for fun

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you buy or you charter when you need it

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I've owned a plane that was a ton of fun but it's a ton of work because your pilots get divorced and there's safety checks and all this bullshit it's like managing a small business charter is difficult because you end up comparing the prices and it's a lot of work hands down fractional is the way to go because you essentially can arbitrage scale up or down based on the mission if it's just you flying somewhere you don't wanna belt so much shit into the air so you go smaller plane if you're taking two families to india which I'm doing you get a big plane and you don't you basically just tax them yeah it's about I spend about 1 and a half or $2,000,000 a year but a friend of mine from high school I really like a mormon kid getting married in a weird place I'm gone why because I have a private plane I figured it out I I can spend another seventeen days a year either with my family or doing something fun because I'm not going to I'm not connecting through you know through dallas fort worth and getting delayed I'm also a bit of a nervous flyer but yeah I I mean I hate to say take my house don't take my plane

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is there anything that your billionaire buddies spend on that you think is stupid and not worth it

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art and wine art is I'm trying to buy culture I've been a boring douchebag my whole life so all of a sudden I'm gonna start overspending on art and it makes me interesting no it doesn't you're still the same douchebag

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what about something that was that's a good way to spend that's below the pj like threshold

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oh travel if you have kids just go you know take them to elephant camp in bangkok like go on safari

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what age did you start traveling with your kids I've got a a two year old and a and a and a three month old and I'm looking forward to traveling

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the three month old is actually easier to travel than the two year old zero to three is awful it gets better you're you're no use your job is to be supportive of your wife and make money that's it you add no value you'll pretend to like it you'll come on podcasts and say oh I love it she did the cutest it's awful and keep them away from a large body of water that's your entire job right now and then at about age three they become less awful and then about from like four to 14 is the golden decade oh do everything go I mean again are incredible stories of privilege but even if you don't have money take your kid the best week I've had in probably the last three years I did a college tour with my son we planned it out together using ai should we go to indiana should we go to washu should we go to michigan state what if we go to if we go to michigan can we see a football game if we go to unc can we see a basketball game I mean we did nine schools in nine days and it was just it was just amazing and but take time with your partner take them somewhere cool and spend there's a ton of research on this people overestimate the amount of happiness they'll get from things and they underestimate the amount of happiness they'll get from experiences in some drive a hyundai and take your husband to africa

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that's awesome you you had a pretty bold thought last time that you were on I think you said something larry you you predicted that america's decade the next decade for america is gonna be flat in terms of economic growth and I think you also said for the index funds do you still believe that to be true

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yeah I'm selling down my american stocks mostly because I'm diversifying because I don't wanna lose I've lost all I've been rich three times which means I've lost it twice I can't go back I'm not you guys are young and have good hair I'm neither neither of those things I can't make it back again so I'm diversifying and if you just look at the cycle of american markets or the global markets typically the us outperforms for eight years then emerging markets outperform for eight years it goes back and forth we've been outperforming emerging markets for seventeen years I still believe the markets are cyclical the buffett index stock market valuation versus gdp he likes it at about 90% it's a 210 the s and p is trading at historic highs 97% of the time the s and p has traded at lower valuations relative to earnings so it's not it's not a criticism of america I just think america america is an asset and the rest of the world is an asset there's america as an asset everything every public company in america every public company outside of america they're equally priced right now they're both you can own every public company in america for a $100 or you can own every public company outside of america for a $100 what do you think is the better value right now

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well mean that's a leading question but I I I would have always assumed america

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oh see I think if you take okay every public company in china europe latin america you think is worth less than the public companies in america

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think I I think like I think that when you look at the s and p I think that the big american companies to me aren't american companies they are

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well they're international mean that's fair that's fair

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that that's so like apple's not an american company it has its major office in cupertino but I don't think of it as an american company at this.

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That's that I think that's a thoughtful response yeah I think america's too expensive right now I think europe's on sale and by virtue of the fact that I am an american and basically the majority of my advertisers I'm always gonna be very invested in america because I own a bunch of real estate in america and my company is largely driven by american human capital and american advertisers so what I'm trying to do is I think the most powerful word I didn't learn until I was in my forties was diversification I just think america's expensive right now it's not even a statement on the judgment on america or american companies I just think america's overvalued right now

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do you wanna hear some of the other predictions that you made on our podcast and we went and looked if they're right or wrong you said apple was overvalued I think we did this podcast eight months ago you said apple apple was overvalued you were right they I think the stock went down since then you said that we what did you say you said that the glp ones were gonna be bigger than gpt four I believe you were right there I think the the glp one market cap think there's like a glp one index I think has grown faster than chatgp or openai's valuation you said mrna stocks are gonna decline and I think you got that correct big time

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moderna's up 90%

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yeah yeah yeah yeah it's down and then you also said that but here's this interesting one you said that food you thought that food stocks of glp ones were gonna be down and mcdonald's is not down think but I think you like made a prediction that you thought that glp ones would be so big that mcdonald's were gonna go down

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I think glp one is a more transformative technology than ai I've said this for a couple years so sean we were talking about microdosing

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yeah

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or whatever it is I'm gonna assume you are microdosing glp one drugs let me ask you what's had a bigger impact on your life glp one drugs or ai

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I I don't micro what do what do mean I don't microdose glp ones so I can't

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oh I just assumed since I've seen you you're fit and trim which I assume means you're on begovy but we'll go with the notion

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you your just gave her a new

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suit sure just sure you just the way

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to me

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the way I don't take ed drugs just so you know I don't I absolutely I don't know what you're talking about I don't I don't take I don't take viagra before it's go time every four sunday during the summer solstice when my partner agrees to have sex with me I absolutely don't take viagra anyways let me ask you this then more more broadly if someone is on a glp one and they're using ai all the time what do you think has a bigger impact on their life

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for sure the glp one

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the fastest way to deficit reduction if I could be president for a day or king for a day and I had a magic wand mandatory national service let me say that right now 25 an hour minimum wage but the third thing I would do I would put out the mother of all rfps de novo nordisk eli lilly and say need a billion doses of glp ones and then I would distribute it for free to every rural household in america and I would take health care costs from 13,000 to $6,500 and boom we have a deficit solved glp one is the most transformative technology of the last twenty or thirty years it's the biggest thing since gps is the way I see it

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that is a a wild take that's what we were gonna actually ask you if you were in charge for a certain amount of time and you could wave a magic wand what would you do and you just answered that question that's I I I never it's very interesting I never in a million years thought you were gonna say that

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do you feel like the do you feel like the data's out on you know the either long term effects the downsides of it or are you saying doesn't really matter the upside is so big that we can can figure out how to mitigate the downsides

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oh I I mean I'm not a scientist we might find out that thirty years down the road people are getting pancreatic cancer but generally speaking

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president galloway you just ordered a billion doses

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generally speaking there's no free lunch right generally speaking whenever the aids cocktail was worth it but it ended up giving giving people who are on it cholesterol problems chemotherapy is amazing you do enough of it you're gonna get leukemia in twenty or thirty years there's just no there's no free lunch I'm a much better version of me a little up I love alcohol I've got more out of it than it's gotten out of me there's definitely not a free lunch on alcohol so far everything we keep learning about glp one is that oh it's even better than we thought it might yeah

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makes you live longer

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it might delay cognitive decline

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it's up to my gambling addiction

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porn addiction they're bite people are biting their nails less

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have you taken it

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no I might microdose it at some.

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I'll be the guinea pig here I had drinking and drug issues and I've been sober for

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long you

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came on here you came on the podcast like what four years twenty

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I think twenty one yeah

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five years ago he told me about something he read in a reddit forum and he injected into his body this was before the trend and he's like this thing is amazing he's like

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yeah

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I'm losing weight he's like but I also I don't have any cravings you told me you said on the podcast you go I think this is gonna cure alcoholism

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what technology tells you to stop eating ice cream and eat more kale

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well okay so I I I've been sober for twelve years or so but when I took it five years ago I was like you know what's crazy is I walked by a brewery the other day sometimes and when I walk by a brewery and I smell like hops you guys ever like smell that in the middle of the day I'm like ugh that's amazing I wish I was there I remember smelling it and I was like I don't like wish I would like don't wanna go there and like drink this stuff and then I remember eating like a scoop of ice cream or just a bite of ice cream and I was like that was lovely I don't want it anymore

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I'm done

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and then I also bit my nails less it was a it was a magical drug it was a very magical drug and people like me I'm I'm a fairly fit person I don't know if it's entirely it's it's not necessary for people like me but if you're obese I think it's it's really amazing but yeah I I and I and I'll microdose it every once in a while because I just think it's interesting and there's always like new varieties you know it's like getting the latest and greatest car there's all these like new varieties that are just like wild it is pretty amazing I think metformin's really interesting too but there's a bunch of these drugs man they are pretty crazy

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I I I think it's I'd give that out I really enjoy this president thing I would eliminate capital gains and mortgage interest rate I'm

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I need to correct myself we said dictator you're dictator

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oh better much better so this dictators should if if you have a benign the best ranked countries in the world I e singapore it's a benign dictator like if you get a good good dictator that's absolutely the way to go you could argue that china in a lot of ways I mean we hate anything that's not democratic I get it the uighurs a lot of people describe xi as a murderous autocrat the life expectancy forty years ago in china was 47 it's now 77 they brought 500,000,000 people out of poverty into the middle class you could argue that china has pulled off something so incredible anyways I would do get rid of capital gains tax deduction mortgage interest rate who owns homes and stocks people my age young people you'd get

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rid of capital gains you're you're you're a complex person man you you you don't fall into one category why would you do that

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because every fiscal policy we've made over the last fifty years is to transfer money from people ari's age to people my age we have slowly but surely old people have figured out a way to vote themselves more money and the average 70 year old is 72% wealthier than they were forty years ago and the average 25 year old is 42% less wealthy and what do you know young people aren't having kids and are fed up with america we are constantly over investing in seniors

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but how did how does that tie to the capital gains because don't don't older people own the assets that would benefit from no capital gains tax

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no no no what I'm sorry what I mean is they pay current income they don't get a tax deduction

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oh wow there should

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be one it should be reagan there should be one income tax rate for all income you make and by the way anyone under the age of 30 like portugal should have a tax holiday for the first $100,000 we desperately need to level up young people who don't like america and have mandatory national service such that they start meeting other great americans

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that's the tax holiday is a great idea

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we need to level up I mean it's pretty simple we need to put more money in the pockets of young people and stop transferring $1,200,000,000,000 from young people to the wealthiest generation in the history of planet old people old people are basically raping our economy for the last thirty or forty years it needs to stop

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okay

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and what do you know our washington dc is a cross between the golden girls and the land of the dead and they keep voting themselves more money $40,000,000,000 child tax credit that would benefit young families stripped out of the infrastructure bill but the $120,000,000,000 cost of living adjustment for social security flies right through enough already

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so you haven't really thought about that question ever before

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but governor newsom likes me

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you're talking about things that me and sam don't know about so we're gonna shift it to things we understand okay you've talked about question five is you've talked about how there's this male loneliness epidemic you've and talked about like policy changes or self motivated and high agency changes that the individual can make what's the business opportunity around the sort of young lost male epidemic

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it's a really helpful the first thing that comes to mind is third places I think you're gonna see you're already seeing a massive uptick and unfortunately it manifests itself because there's a monopoly ticketmaster in ticket prices to go see taylor swift or you know whoever it is but I think third places I think we need more bars I think we need more sports leagues I think we need you know putt shack wave garden topgolf I think we should provide subsidies to third places I also think we need to unlock I think developers in the us I think you're gonna see a huge counter cyclical movement against nimby laws and that the government will probably come out with subsidies rent control makes no sense that just makes housing more expensive because you limit supply we need instead of drill baby drill it should be build baby build I think the development companies were are going to get government sponsored subsidies to encourage them to build more and we're gonna start doing away with nimby laws that's they what they've done in minneapolis what they've done in austin but housing has gotten way too expensive for young people for the entrance and I think that being fewer to invest in developers right now or great third places where people meet I think that's a way to make money unfortunately I hate to say it the guys who are gonna clean up here are the guys tapping into young men's worst instincts you're gonna see the speculation markets boom gaming is out of control because if you're a 19 year old dude in a french class at cal state northridge it'd just be more fun to bet on whether the next pitch is gonna be 90 miles an hour or greater the most profitable companies are gonna be the ones tapping into an immature prefrontal cortex of an american male so unfortunately way to make money off the loneliness epidemic is probably meta because they're exploiting it in terms of how to solve it I think that's more public policy I'd like to think there's a great way to make money doing it but unfortunately all the profit incentives around making young men lonelier and lonelier

MFM

didn't you used to own like a social club in new york

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did I remember that correct no I'm I'm a member of all of them I go to all of them I'm a my my general investment philosophy is the following the sexier it is I wanna join I won't get near it with a check a friend of mine is opening a members club in downtown manhattan for musicians and artists sounds amazing I went great opening party people I need to be the oldest least attractive person wherever I am then I know I'm at the right place and this was that so I join I'll join it he asked me to be an investor I'm like no way no way another friend of mine is starting a saas platform for healthcare maintenance scheduling working there sounds like I wanna put a gun in my mouth take my money the more boring and less sexy an investment is that's where you invest the other shit you consume but you don't invest in it your return on your invested capital is inversely correlated to how sexy and cool an industry sounds

MFM

but your your your your big career win was l two which you know that's I started watching you years and years ago on l two because you would do no mercy no malice these amazing youtube videos I think I never to be honest I never understood exactly what l two was I didn't know if it was like a consultancy or a software but it was basically helping brands look at different data to decide where they rank and what they need to do to improve but you made that I mean that on paper does not sound exciting you made it pretty sexy and cool I loved watching your youtube videos that was pretty awesome

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you're you're being generous it was digital benchmarking where we used software and scraping tools to aggregate 1,200 data points on a brand and then we compare them to their peers

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oh make it be weak at my knees just just saying that

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oh yeah just because you like money but yeah that and then recurring revenue model you know we had an ultimately ended up selling for eight times revenues when I was doing strategy consulting which sounded much cooler I would charge william snow or levi's half $1,000,000 to do their internet strategy and then like two thirds of the way through the engagement come up with new problems that only I could solve so they would pay me more but the recurring revenue international benchmarking you know digital you know I think it sounds cool I like that stuff but I wanna be quarterback of the jets that sounded much cooler to me when I was in high school I didn't think I'd be in digital benchmarking so or analytics but yeah the the less sexy an industry the greater the return on your human and financial capital

MFM

so I live in san francisco and in the last four years the most sexy thing to be investing in is ai and my biggest investment has been put millions and millions of dollars into retail shopping centers which if you walk around san francisco anybody here will tell you that's dead what are you talking about people don't go to brick and mortar stores anymore

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I think it's gonna be a great investment

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but it's been phenomenal like I'm

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it's great investment

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basically compounding like 44% a year and I get the tax benefits of real estate and it's passive and I don't like and it's like retail which everyone thinks is dead there's I think less than 4% vacancy rates like nationally simon properties is nobody killing builds anymore it's just supply constraint and you know my investor updates are not about ai it's about how burlington co factory signed you know extended their ten year lease and how we just put in a homegoods or you know like into these into these centers and it's been the least sexy but the most profitable investment I made all of my venture investing is giving me zero cash flow and you know of zero returns because it's this ten year arc whereas boring shopping centers has crushed it for me

MFM

yeah I I mean there's some nuance there because I think the tier two malls are struggling but the yeah I mean some were in violent agreement

MFM

well actually one of the things you said about third places has has actually shown up to be true so the one thing that died was like macy's or like you know bunch of bankruptcies for joann's and things like that yeah but they all get replaced with experiential things so it's trampoline parks it's top golf it's you know things like that that are experiences that people wanna go do and so you're seeing anybody who understood that can look at a center that has vacancy or a tenant on the way out but you can there's tons of demand for these experiential yep things to fill them

MFM

you've you've talked a lot about marriage and this is our next question but you said you talk about how important it is both financially and emotionally to marry the right person so if we were gonna do the the inversion of that what would you say is the best and easiest way to marry the wrong person

MFM

it's a really thoughtful question when I was a young man and I was trying to find romantic or sexual partners I was constantly trying to figure out what person do I need to be that will get them to like me I was trying to constantly figure it out do I need to act indifferent like I don't care I was just it wasn't me establishing a relationship with this person or on a date with this person it was my representative who tried to figure out what I thought this person would want from me or specifically how I could convince this person to have sex with me and what you realize is the person you wanna end up with is the person where you get to be you and they like you despite the real you like in the best relationships I've ever had are people that I like I can be me around and they just really like me for me like I'm I look back on sources of confidence my first serious relationship was a woman named melanie kagan and I was crazy about her and she was crazy about me and I think that confidence of someone who actually knows you and you can be honest with and call and who sees your insecurities and you know and still really is into you I just think I if I could wish anything on a young person it would be the opportunity to be who you are around somebody and find out that people's there are people out there who will love you for that I just think that I didn't figure that out I was constantly trying to put on a mask of who I thought would be the most attracted or interested in me and bragging and boasting and and also I think the ultimate weapon the ultimate aphrodisiac for young men to give to women is this strange thing called follow-up questions for me it was always controlled boasting and to actually just take an interest in someone's life and notice them I found was really powerful later in my life I would also recommend probably being very careful about getting married young I think you're a different person at 32 than you are at 22 I would always suggest living together first to see what it's like to have that kind of roommate I think you need to get alignment around money I've been the best man of four weddings and I get the same toast every time and it's a sincere toast there are three things to a six being a successful husband the first is put the scorecard away decide what kind of husband son friend partner investor you wanna be hold yourself to that standard don't keep score I've kept score my whole life with relationships it's been a disaster for me because you will naturally inflate your own contribution and minimize theirs and you always feel unhappy decide the kind of person you wanna be hold yourself to that standard two always express physical and sexual desire sex says an affection whether it's holding a hand or fooling around with your partner in the bathroom at a party it says I choose you I want you I think women wanna be wanted and I I I just think that animal instinct expressing desire is super important in a partnership and I think it's a wonderful thing I think we're physical beings and the third thing is never ever let a woman be cold or hungry pashmina's and power bars wherever you are

MFM

you you are just so full of sound bites like the the best aphrodisiac to give a woman is a follow-up question when we ask well we when I when we just asked you that when I asked you that I the way that you got silent and were slow to answer I was like nice he's never talked about it this way we're gonna get something totally fresh but then you like say these phrases where I'm like how on earth do you come up with this stuff it's really it's really really good sean and I were talking about eddie murphy and he was like I'm a good comedian because I'm sensitive I'm very sensitive to details and I see things that maybe other people don't see and I just notice things and I am able to talk about them and it makes everyone laugh because it's something that they all notice but they're not exactly sure that they're sensitive enough to really comment on what allows you do you think to come up with these interesting observations is it being sensitive what is it

MFM

it's mostly ip theft I get most of my ideas from other people and I'll pause when I see something really interesting or that kind of moves me and I'll repeat it a bunch of times and try to apply it so it's how to remember it I've just found this thing I forget who even said it but it really moved me and it was that everything does not demand your judgment you don't have you're entitled to not have opinions on things and it I just paused and I thought about it over and over and over and I've used that I've used that line a bunch of times because I was falling into this trap of dunning kruger I thought okay because I have some insight around a couple things that everyone demands to deserve and wants my opinion on everything and I I do all these hot takes on the podcast and videos and you know it's like the epstein files come out and I'm like alright how do I wrap my hands around that I'm like you know what maybe the world isn't dying to hear from me about the epstein files maybe the world isn't dying to hear about my views on iran although I have a lot of views on iran it's like okay it's okay to occasionally sit back and just shut the fuck up anyways my.

MFM

Is if I see something that I find really insightful and interesting I stop I read it a bunch of times to try and apply it and I try to cement it into my gray manner so I don't think I'm that insightful I think I'm good at identifying thoughtful ideas and I try I try to reference where I got the idea from but there's so much amazing material out there

MFM

it seems like you pay attention to what resonates better than most what resonates with yourself I think that's kind of like the eddie murphy sensitivity idea also but it does seem like there has to be either an incredible knack for just nailing it put you know putting the words around it right away or an intentional effort to kind of punch things up I guess like how do you arrive at the the kill shot that you have at the end right you've said 10 of them on this podcast already and you know in some ways we're asking steph curry to tell us how to shoot a jump shot but like do you do anything that you think the average person doesn't do to be better at that

MFM

well first off you're being generous I get it wrong a lot

MFM

no I'm not saying you're right I'm saying you're lyrical I'm saying you're very persuasive

MFM

I say really stupid things all the time and and you know in my comments section will remind me of that all the time I get it wrong a lot I don't know if it's 49 or 50 it's two things I don't know if it's 49 or 51% genetic my father was really a gifted storyteller and he was a salesman he had a scottish accent and a big strong jawline and I just noticed from the age of eight that people would create a semicircle around him just to listen to him he just had a he was just an amazing storyteller a lot of my ability to communicate is not my fault and then you may have a great swing naturally but if you don't take lessons every day and play four hours of golf you're not gonna be tiger woods and I'm not at that same level but I'm like a guy who just got his you know amateur pro am card I get to speak for twenty two years I speak in front of a 160 students paying a $180,000 per class to listen to me talk about something I'm on podcasts every day I write several thousand words a week about a concept I'm really trying to understand it I have a group of analysts who find data so I'm practicing golf four hours a day there's no michael phelps is in the pool six hours a day from the age of five you have to and by the way he has naturally huge webbed feet that that are not his fault right I think if there's one secret sauce to communicating is that if you can write well you're gonna be a decent communicator and I got a c in english in high school but I've never stopped writing so again it's some some genetics some hard work some practice

MFM

can you actually tell us when do you find time because I'm so at professorgalloway.com no mercy no malice is the blog which I read I love and so you just wrote up two blog posts this week or in the past two weeks actually

MFM

what's that what's the total volume so it's like two newsletters a week it's how many podcasts how many extra youtube videos you know like what what's the total volume you're outputting in a week

MFM

I write a book every eighteen months

MFM

k

MFM

I do seven podcasts a week I put out a newsletter every week

MFM

seven recordings a week

MFM

seven recordings a week across different podcasts I do two to three media hits either radio or television a week and I try not to work more than thirty or forty hours and storytelling is my core competence but my superpower is I've always been able to attract and retain really good people people think people come up to me and say I'm so impressed with your content I love your graphs and your doodles they think it's me they think it's me in my kitchen with a camcorder and doodling on a napkin I have 28 people at prop g media yeah I have some talent but the key between a practice and an enterprise that creates real money is to find outstanding people and get and get them to leverage your time and your talent

MFM

but are you sitting down and actually writing this these 1,000 or 2,000 words and then they're gonna take that and help you turn it into more stuff

MFM

on monday mornings we do an editorial team with all the producers all the data analysts all the podcast hosts and I have several writers and we go through stories so epstein files biggest story I'm like do we have anything original to say here what's the angle no we don't have an angle here then I'm not interested in talking about it oh let's write about the power of national or economic strikes why it's so powerful and that the trump administration only listens to markets doesn't lose to listen to protests citizenry that's an interesting angle alright you're writing the newsletter this week you draft these paragraphs I'll draft these three paragraphs I'll edit it thursday night we need oh we have josh shapiro coming on the podcast tomorrow what are the questions we just go through all the different stories and content and then we try and come up with original things and then we start producing the content and then when it's good we have great editors we snake it through our channels it might be the newsletter it might be our instagram posts it might be our linkedin it might be if I really like something I'm like okay that's gonna be chapter seven of a book called project twenty twenty eight which is my next book which is a response to project twenty twenty five more of a progressive like policy book but we do an editorial meeting and people get to work they pitch stories they pitch me on all these stories and I say what's the angle here what's the data or the insight we're bringing to the story and if you can't answer that question I'm like well let's cnbc or cnn cover it

MFM

and what about your solo creative time so you know disney would wake up and doodle sure seinfeld wakes up goes to kitchen table and writes jokes for two hours it's you know the solitude part where you're gonna have your original ideas outside of the team

MFM

yeah I generally go to sleep around two or 3am and I sleep till about ten and my creative time is usually my best hours are between 11pm and 2am with the dogs everyone's asleep I feel at peace I know my boys are safe I turn on my fireplace sometimes I have a drink sometimes I have a edible and my dogs are with me and I do some surfing online I think about something that's inspired me and I'll either go downstairs and do a video in a fur coat or I'll start writing and then the next morning I look at it and go this is shit or I go oh this is pretty good and I start pinging it around and I say add some data here get I'll send it to our illustration people and say start thinking about charts for this we're gonna put it out in newsletter form or as a video but I'm constantly thinking about and producing data but my flow state is really really late at night

MFM

are you doing any company running like any administrative or any managing

MFM

less and less I used to do that a lot I've you know like you sam I've run and built companies now I've I have the luxury of doing what I wanna do and what I wanna do is create content and I have outstanding people catherine dillon and a woman named clodi jokus just who's been working for long time catherine's been my partner for fifteen years they run the business occasionally they'll bring me in to try and close someone we're hiring I get on the phone I see the finance I love numbers see the financials almost every week and I I think I can spot weakness and strength from the analytics and the numbers but for the most part I want out of the business I love running business except for the clients and the employees I have other people managing everything almost and they're really talented and I pay them really well and I can focus on doing what I love which is creating content and and saying provocative interesting things and trying to have you know trying to matter if you will but I'm out of the business of running businesses I'm done I am done

MFM

were you a good boss

MFM

I think I was just okay I was good in the sense that I think I created economic security for a lot of people I was raised in a generation in san francisco where steve jobs is our mentor and and there was this terrible gestalt that infected a bunch of young tech executives including myself that if you were talented and nice you were talented if you were talented and an asshole were steve jobs and you were a genius and so I wasn't nearly as kind I was never mean to people but I wasn't nearly as kind as I should have been and what you happens when you get older is you realize you have this capital sometimes it's just financial capital you can pay people well but if you're a senior level exec and someone they respect grabbing someone and sending them pulling them into a room or sending them an email saying you're outstanding here I'm so impressed with you it changes their life for a day and I never did that shit and now I do it all the time I'm trying to catch up but I also on the negative side occasionally say something would say something stupid in a meeting and rather than taking them aside and saying that makes no sense I would say in the meeting that makes no sense and the person would be humiliated that was not I'm not proud of that that was not a kind thing to do but I thought that's leadership I could have been so much kinder so I am now I I try to be really thoughtful and proactive and I hear about someone getting divorced and I just call them and say I'm giving you money I had a friend of mine who's fairly famous get arrested a few days ago in minneapolis and I'm like just send me your bank details everyone needs money when they get arrested like don't talk about it don't there's something I've learned don't ask people if they need help help them but don't ask no one wants to say yeah I need help you're more powerful than me and I up and you're on top I need your help don't ask people if they need help help them

MFM

I think the the fun part about talking with you is like this okay so this podcast we start out as like incredibly ambitious like get after it type of like guys in san francisco

MFM

incredibly insecure guys who thought success would solve the problem

MFM

yeah but we it's really fun talking to you because I think that like you have to remind yourself on a consistent basis that the reason why this whole entrepreneurship thing is kinda cool is because you could help others you could put your debt in in the earth and all that stuff but you could do it your way you know the best part about this podcast and we've we've done nearly 800 episodes we've talked we've talked to so many people and we could show you examples of someone who has broken every single rule or followed every single rule and they've still gotten to the end state the the end goal and the cool thing about business is there's just you can you can you can do it anyway and it's really cool to hear you explain the ways that you do things which is very unconventional it's super not common and you are achieving the desired goal which is to build a great company to treat people well and to have a good life

MFM

when you go into your fifties this weird thing happens and it's really awful your friends start dying there's these genetic time bombs that go off in the last few years I've had a friend die from a nerve disorder leukemia and pancreatic cancer who just should not have died there's a picture of eight of us from the fraternity at ucla you know closest our posse our closest friends three of us are dead and if you had ranked all of us including some of us who've become obese some of us who are too stressed out these would have been the guys who would be least likely to die and so all of a sudden you just start thinking about okay what's important to me and if you're blessed with economic security you immediately move to like alright money is a means but it's not the ends and it is very hard to to start behaving that way I just put a jackson hole because I got offered $200,000 to speak what and I said yes I can't help if someone offers me four times or five times my mother's annual salary when she was a secretary I can't help it I go and it took me away from my boys for three days by the way it's not easy to get from london to jackson hole just so you know and for a one hour speech to these masters of the universe and I'm like why am I I got there and I'm like why am I here I miss my kid my kid had one line singing and his thing and I'm like I should be at that why the fuck am I not there and so you realize as you get older like if you're blessed with some level of economic security do shit with your friends do shit on your own one of my role models is this guy named barry rosenstein famous hedge fund manager and I asked I came from I was asking him about wealth once you get to a.

MFM

Of economic security he said the hard part is and and the lesson here is the following when you get to economic security there's three buckets in your life there's things you have to do you said Scott if my biggest investor's in town I have to have dinner with them there there's things you wanna do I wanna go on college tour with my my oldest I wanna do that and then there's things you should do the real power of economic security is is like eliminate the should bucket there's things you wanna do there's things you have to do get rid of the should and what I realized is like half the things I was doing in my life with a should bucket I've been invited to davos well I absolutely should go I'm a davos I'm like why am I here why am I here

MFM

well why'd you go why'd you go to jacksonville why'd you go

MFM

that long because I'm still insecure and think that if I get invited back to davos that I will be enough that finally I will fill the hole that can't seem to be filled here

MFM

it sounds like gavin did fill the hole though

MFM

well okay it was fine but I should there's no reason for me to go to davos there's literally no reason I mean great a fist bump from governor newsom is fantastic but I get invited to everything that sounds obnoxious but it's true go to the sexy shit cannes lions hotel decab that shit's sexy go to south by southwest tex mex food all these podcasters weird after party that shit sexy davos has the sex appeal of a marriott lobby it is it just couldn't be anymore non sexy anyways it's liberating to go do I need to go to this seminar because there's gonna be a lot of powerful people there do I need to accept a speaking gig because it's a lot of money no you don't need to

MFM

so so you've talked about economic security and you said that term a bunch of times if somebody's listening to this and they're like what numbers does that take and it's obviously you know somewhat different for everybody but walk walk the listener through what is economic security how should they think about that because I know guys who've got a lot who still need more I know people who don't have much that should probably fight a little harder to get a little bit more because they'd have more free time give me the the milestones or the benchmarks and ideally with numbers that that you can think of

MFM

sure the number's easy take your take your burn take what you think you need every year to be happy for some people that's 60,000 a year my dad with social security needed like another 10 or $20 a year to live the way he wanted to live some people need a million bucks a year and then times it by 25 assume a post tax return of 4% and once you have 25 times the burn you think you'll need you can start eliminating the shit bucket

MFM

and does that change over time because you know your burn at the time when you probably first got secure was different than now if you're spending $3,000,000 a year

MFM

I've been very open about this I think not talking about your money is an attempt to keep middle and lower income homes down rich people talk about money to each other all the time I spend 3 to $400,000 a month so if you take that at 5,000,000 times 25 I need a 125,000,000 to be economically secure and by the way when I was younger I thought if I ever have a million dollars I'm done I used to think like in my twenties if I could ever save a million dollars I'm done I'm gonna start writing scripts for tom cruise films and just do whatever I want and then as you get older you realize how expensive kids are how expensive it is to live in new york how expensive it is to take care of your parents and your taste and your greed glands begin to grow right you're like I could never imagine you know owning multiple homes pretty soon you can

MFM

I live in manhattan and it's just crazy seeing how people live man there's people you could earn $3,000,000 a year this this is gonna be a clip that someone's gonna mock me for but let me just say you can make 2 to $3,000,000 a year and seriously with a family and live paycheck to paycheck like it's crazy how much how much money people spend to live here I I know people who will spend a 100,000 a month and they tell me they don't feel rich it's it's pretty wild

MFM

no you're exactly right no one feels sorry for you but if you live I lived in manhattan and in 2010 I was just starting to get speaking gigs I was just starting to get sorta real money from being a professor my partner was working at goldman I think we were making 7 or $800 a year that felt like a lot of money to me we couldn't afford to live in manhattan we just had two kids granted we didn't need to send our kids to private school but we were going to we were renting our rent was $14,000 a month we needed a three bedroom because we had to live in because she worked and so did I we had no money it's not your birthright to live in manhattan so what we did was and the thing that sent us over the edge was my kid applied to seven schools after the age of four and got rejected from all seven because he was speech delayed by the way story ends well he just got into uva early decision so things worked out for him but when he couldn't speak at the age of four all seven schools we applied to said no so when schools that you're gonna pay $58,000 to for the kid to play with blocks decide they don't want your son I'm like that's it we're out of here I moved to florida back when it was inexpensive in 2010 and I'm not exaggerating I saved I cut my burn by probably 50% I rented a place on the intercoastal for $5,000 a month instead of paying 14 the school was 14,000 instead of 58 and we were very disciplined we took all of our savings including the 13% of top line in tax savings and we invested in the market and kind of the rest is history it's fine to be ambitious I find young people don't want an honest conversation around what's required to live the lifestyle they want to live where they want to live it and people are really there's a lot of really happy people living in a suburb of saint louis who join a country club coach little league and make a 100 a year you know their husband is a nurse maybe they work part time he works part time at a nonprofit there's a lot of different ways to be happy but be clear if you wanna live in manhattan or la or san francisco or even now miami and have a fabulous lifestyle you're gonna have to make a shit ton of money which means you're gonna have to work all the time unless you're smart enough to have rich parents and what I find with young people is they don't wanna have an honest conversation around their burn and the sacrifice required to get there

MFM

do wanna do the last question sean

MFM

yeah okay we can finish with this so you've you've got sons and so I almost wanna think about like what you would tell your sons so I wanna know what advice you believe to be true but a part of you hesitates to say it publicly because it might sound harsh or unfair and people won't like it

MFM

I have a lot of those

MFM

yeah you kinda made your profession off this but I think for for most people it's a pretty tough question

MFM

drink more go out drink more make a series of bad decisions that might pay off when you're in the company of women you pay for everything always no woman is ever gonna kiss you if who splits the check with you all all mammals have a mating process the downside of sex is much greater for a woman her fertility window is much shorter men benefit more from relationships the asymmetry and advantage of going on a day with a woman one way you restore that asymmetry and demonstrate valor is to pay with absolutely no expectation it's just it's just a given and my kids are like dad you're so boomer I'm like just be clear no one's ever gonna kiss you who you don't pay for

MFM

is that what you said to the woman on your first date when she's like oh no let's split it you're like listen I

MFM

I think that is something that tiktokers talk about I've never seen a woman grab for a check and I know that sounds sexist I have just I've never I've never in my life had a woman pay for every anything and I know that I like to pay before I get there so it's not awkward with like nine pages and I can't read the tip

MFM

that's a baller move

MFM

just just we're done there's no expectation I'm not a john you're not a prostitute but I appreciate your time I'm hoping some at some? To have sex with you so I wanna demonstrate strength and that I can take care of your kids versus the guy wearing a casio watch who talks about sending you a venmo request I I don't care what anyone says one way you demonstrate valor and masculinity if you can't pay I hate it when men split checks dude man the up you get this one get the next one you don't split checks you're gonna make some waiter go back and figure out how to split the check and who's gonna give them 14 or 17% I I've done this from a young age I did not have money until I was in my forties if I couldn't afford to pay I didn't go I didn't go and anyways drink more I've gotten real pushback on that and men should always pay always so those are two things

MFM

so darmesh shah do know darmesh Scott yeah he's the founder of hubspot I I assume he's a billionaire I think he is a billionaire and he one time I went out to dinner with him and I brought a friend of mine and we ate a lot it was a really fancy restaurant and he ran to the bathroom and I wanted to be cool and I paid the bill and he came back and he goes hey let's pay and I was like no it's it's taken care of already and he was like what what and he ran to the kitchen he made him refund the check to me and he paid and I was like darmesh what are you doing man like let me let me let me be cool here and he was like listen years ago when I was like 22 or 24 I came to america and I started a business and I wanted to get customers and everyone told me you had to play golf and I didn't know how to play golf and I felt awkward playing golf but then another person told me well just take them out to dinner and just pay for the bills and that's a really good way for you to like treat people nicely and particularly customers and he goes from that day forward I think he was 25 I vowed to pay for dinner 100% of the time that I went out and no one would ever pay for my dinner and so if you go and pay for this dinner you will be ruining twenty five years of me paying for everyone's dinner and it was hilarious to hear him just like go through this spiel and so he has paid for everyone's dinner that he's ever been out to eat with for twenty five years now

MFM

there's some nuance here and my partner reminded me of this I always pay for every dinner and she's like you realize this is an ego thing and it's about control and she goes get where you're coming from but people who are your friends and also have their own economic security don't want you constantly asserting your ego and your power over them by paying for everything all the time that this is about your insecurity it's no longer about your generosity it's about your insecurity and trying to express some sort of weird dominance and I got so angry when she said this because I think some of it is true and the reality is your friends like I always used to be don't ask my friends for it once I got success don't ask my friends for anything offer them advice help them out and the reality is that's not a friendship

MFM

yeah that's sort of obnoxious that's like yeah

MFM

big big yeah occasionally you need to call your friends and say I'm struggling with my marriage I just got diagnosed with high blood pressure I'm really upset about it your friends wanna comfort you your friends don't wanna be just your you know beneficiary they want they want occasionally to say no I'm doing well I can pay for dinner I get that I'm I think that if you're not letting occasionally asking your friends for help and being vulnerable and exposing your insecurities and your weaknesses and your anxiety then you don't have a friendship and what I realized was a lot of it was ego with me trying to you know thump my chest I don't need anyone's help I just help everybody else then you don't have friendships you have a series of transactions but I go back to what I was saying anyone with ovaries you pay for everything

MFM

no nuance to that one what I like is that you have a code I think that I'm always interested and attracted to people who have their own code that they've established a way of living and I tend to disagree with a lot of their code but more than anything I agree with the fact that they have a code and I respect that I think most people lack a code to live by I think they lack an operating philosophy I think maybe religion used to give it to them think they reject the one that their parents or society want you know there's a natural desire to reject what your parents or society pushes on you but it's not replaced or substituted with a valuable operating philosophy and I think that's probably one of the the things I think people lack the most and so I hope that if even if you disagree with half of the the shit that Scott said I think the more important thing is to ask do you have a code and do you have a code that you live by and that you've established on your own terms from your own lived experiences and values

MFM

I I 100% agree some people get their everybody needs a code too many decisions coming at you without a code some people get it from religion the military their parents I didn't have a code when I was younger I was trying to handle everything extemporaneously and it was hard so yeah an imperfect code is better than no code at all otherwise it's so hard to just know how to handle all these situations and I very much agree you guys never brought up my side or my movement resist and unsubscribe

MFM

well wait I really don't I don't even know what this is all about tell me tell me I like tell me from the beginning I genuinely don't don't even know what you're talking about

MFM

I am horrified by what's going on in minneapolis and across our nation I I think there's an interest in being right in being effective I wanna move to being effective what I've noticed is the trump administration only walks back things when the markets move and the fastest way to make the markets move right now is to go after the companies that are 40% of the s and p by unsubscribing from from amazon from apple from Microsoft platforms from I have a whole list of what I call ground zero and then going after and holding the power of the purse from companies providing infrastructure whether it's at and t or hilton but I have a site called resist and unsubscribe and I'm trying to convince people that the the weapon hiding in plain sight is their spending 70% of our economy is consumer spending and if you just in 2020 the greatest political action in history was the 2020 and it wasn't because hundreds of thousands of people were dying it was because the gdp crashed 31% if we can put a dent in the magnificent ten's economic power the president will hear about that and he will respond and the fast way to do that if you unsubscribe from chatgpt they're trading at 40 times revenues $240 that's $10,000 market cap you take away from openai if you try to do that with kroger's you would need five families to stop buying all groceries for a year so go after the soft tissue and that is tech companies subscription and you're gonna find as I did you have three subscriptions to anthropic you don't need three I have seven streaming media platforms I don't need seven I was on amazon one the health care company paying a $199 a year I don't need that this is unsubscribe february is a great time to take stock of all the money we're spending at the hands of millions of people and billions of capital they convince you to spend more money than you need and it sends a message to the markets and the administration resist and unsubscribe

MFM

and these companies they are specifically contributing to the problem or you're just saying the whole market has to shake for the administration to move it's not that these individual companies did anything wrong is that what you're saying

MFM

oh no they're enabling this bullshit when tim cook shows up with inscribed hard drives and goes to the melania premiere when jeff bezos pays $45,000,000 for a documentary that brightens up the room by leaving it

MFM

so you're you're picking companies that have kissed the ring is what you're talking about

MFM

these are the enablers these are the people who've said okay kiss his ass I mean there's some historical precedents here in the early thirties germany the captains of the manufacturing industry turned to blind eye to hitler in the rise of fascism because he said if you don't come out against me they were very worried about him I will crush the trade unions and you will make a shit ton of money there's an apt analogy here and that is I get text messages from these guys saying I hate myself I don't wanna go to the white house I'm like well hate you too because you're not willing to speak up and the very values and principles rule of law capitalism competition free markets that built these amazing companies and made these guys billionaires is under attack right now and they don't wanna speak up because they think they're gonna make money well be careful what you ask for but these are the enablers and your free gift with purchase spend less money send a message to the people who you know tell them to put away the knee knee pads and speak your mind they probably have to do it collectively because he goes after people who go first but this is a great way to send a message to the president to the markets and to these individuals that this what what is happening here is un american and you are desecrating the values that made you so goddamn rich

MFM

and earlier you had said you have researchers and you were talking about your editorial process and the example you used was like the power of a of a boycott when I hear you talk about this think my $10 youtube subscription doesn't move the needle but it sounds like you have some data that shows otherwise

MFM

if Microsoft misses its expectations by one percentage. It loses 10% of its value other companies go down in sympathy the nasdaq one hundred lost one and a half% in one day the only time the president has walked back the annexation of greenland or tariffs is when the markets have moved

MFM

how many people do you need to do to participate for this to matter

MFM

the reality is okay so these are my objectives my objectives is to send a signal to the markets and to consumers that they have power with their purchases and that they should be thoughtful about where they spend money and where they decide not to spend money I'm trying to assemble infrastructure part of my infrastructure is a website that makes it easy for people to unsubscribe from big tech platforms I would love it if enough people collectively canceled such that all of a sudden amongst a variety of reasons the the ceos of these companies say maybe we should be a little less sycophantic maybe we should push back is that happening right now probably not I'm getting a 100,000 uniques a day to my site I'm getting thousands of screenshots but is openai changing its plans because of what I'm doing probably not but here's the thing as you get older I'm sick of heckling from the cheap seats I wanna be on the field I wanna be doing something when I was a younger man I used to take public risks and now I just get angry at everybody else so I wanted to do something but it I'll be honest it's gonna take a lot but it would take less unsubscribing from big tech to have an impact than anything else and one day protests are powerful but there's more symbolic they're more cinematic than powerful I think of a if if single digit millions of people unsubscribe from tech platforms one they'd find out that they're saving a lot of money and spending money where they didn't think to and I think these guys would notice so yeah you know I'm one hair on the horse's tail but I'm kinda sick of talking about it not doing anything

MFM

it must be kind of fun though a little bit too like you said like you're like I I like to give money because it makes me feel good that's kinda I I I think that it feels nice to have an enemy and to and to get behind a movement

MFM

you're worried you're throwing a party and no one's gonna show up right so there's some public failure risk here but it feels good to do things with other people and also I just I just cancelled my uber account and when you cancel it it gives you a graphic it shows you how many time you've ordered from uber eats I've ordered 34 times from uber eats and then it shows you how many uber rides you've taken in the last ten years I've taken 3,747 uber rides so I take 350 rides a year I do uber lux I don't own a car and as big tech platforms do they used to price it very aggressively they consolidate the market and then uber has raised the prices on uber x I'm sorry uber lux seven to 10% a year way above inflation so the average price of uber lux when I was first taking it was 40 to $60 now it's 80 to 120 so and again story of privilege I'm spending $35,000 a year on uber so I've started taking the tube here in london I've started taking the subway in new york which is awesome and I've started taking uberx and I figured with the money I'm saving I could lease an I seven a range rover or a g wagon including insurance and parking and this is a story of privilege I realize most people can't spend that kind of money on uber but what I'm telling you is if you really look at recurring revenue subscription payments to big tech you're gonna find out you can save a lot of money without a great deal of effort and so I'm I'm excited about this this is the soft tissue this is the testicles of the economy these companies are out way over their skis their valuations are inflated if you wanna send a message to the president don't like and subscribe this video resist and unsubscribe

MFM

and our youtube channel is not on this list feel free to keep that subscription we are not part of the testicles of this country

MFM

that's right

MFM

that's right

MFM

so that resistandunsubscribe.com that's that's where they do it alright Scott amazing as always thanks for coming on man I hope you had fun

MFM

I really enjoy this thanks guys I appreciate the thoughtful questions

MFM

cool

MFM

alright thank you man that's it that's the pod we appreciate you

MFM

take care