Anthony Scaramucci - SkyBridge Capital Founder & SALT Conference Creator | 11 Days in the White House Then He Built a $3.5B Investment Firm

0:00 Which version of you wrote this book? I took my working class background, my observation of 38 years on Wall Street, my failed White House communication experience, plus my observations in the media. I sort of welded those together to create that book. Today's guest is Anthony Scaramucci, a Wall Street financier, founder of Skybridge Capital and former White House communications director. From finance to politics and now podcasting, Anthony has built a career at the center of some of the biggest conversations in America. In this conversation, he shares lessons from Wall Street, his time in the White House, the mistakes that shaped his career, and why learning from failure can be one of your greatest advantages. I think some of them feel like entrepreneurship is the only way to survive because life seems very stressful.

0:44 What's your take? The number one thing, whether you're stressed out as an entrepreneur or you're stressed out at a job, don't play the victim. Now you're so deeply involved and understand politics so well. Do you find that people are checking out? There's a voting bloc in this country, 100 million plus people. They vote the exact same way in every single election. It's the non-voter. Every single election, they don't vote. But they're eligible, but they've checked out. MyFitnessPal is a success story partner. Now, there's this thing that happens when you start paying attention to what you eat. And I think we can all agree that we wanna care about our health and our wellness and our nutrition, but more often than not, we just kind of think we eat clean, we think we eat healthy, but we're not really, really paying attention to every single meal and what makes up every single meal.

1:29 But just by paying attention and starting to log and track what you eat, you start making better choices without really trying. And that surprised me because when I first started using the MyFitnessPal app, and I've been using it for a while now, it's a nutrition tracking app. And I started logging what I was eating. It started showing me my macros, which means how much protein, carbs, and fats I was getting. And then I started to understand why some days I felt good, high energy. Some days I felt like garbage because those three things, proteins, carbs, fats, that's what your food is made out of. And the balance between them affects everything. So, My fitness pal app truly changed my life when it came to managing my food, which managed and helped everything else.

2:11 Now on the premium version of the app, it breaks down those numbers by meal. So I'm not just seeing one calorie number for the day. I can see what's happening at breakfast versus lunch versus dinner, where my protein actually lands, whether I'm eating enough earlier in the day or piling everything on at night. And all of a sudden, When I'm crashing at 3, 4 p.m., well, I can take a look and see, it's not so surprising anymore based on what I ate or what I didn't eat. So that's what I mean when I say that MyFitnessPal is a great app for awareness. It's not obsessive, it's not stressful, it's not time consuming, it's actually the opposite. Guessing is stressful. When you have all the information, the food you eat, your nutrition, becomes way easier to keep up with.

2:53 Also, a lot of people stress out that logging food is gonna be very time consuming. It's not. And if it was annoying, I'd stop. But what I love about the app is that they've made it super, super simple. They've removed all friction in food logging, right? They have the largest food database out there. So whatever I'm eating is already in it. I can voice logs so I can just say what I'm eating. They have a barcode scanner that handles all the package stuff. They have a tool called MealScan, which lets me point my camera at my plate and it breaks down all the macros and then logs it for breakfast, lunch, dinner, whatever. And the app remembers my regular meals. And I'm really just in and out of the app in seconds. And on top of that, it connects with over 40 fitness apps and wearables. So my workouts, my nutrition, they're all in one place.

3:35 See, food is the foundation of everything. your energy, your sleep, your weight, your recovery, your performance at work, at home. And I really believe that when you start to pay attention to what you eat, every single part of your life improves. And to be honest, for me, it's the most useful tool because when I see the information, when I see what I'm eating, and I feel the effects of having good nutrition and good food at the right time, the decisions on what to eat become obvious. Not because someone told me to eat better, it's because I have the data. And the data makes it super, super easy to stay on track. So please do yourself a favor. Go to podcast.myfitnesspal.com and use code Scott. That's S-C-O-T-T, all uppercase letters, for 15% off MyFitnessPal Premium.

4:18 That is podcast.myfitnesspal.com, code Scott, for 15% off MyFitnessPal Premium. So you've lived about five different lives, working class kid, Goldman Sachs, your own firm, the White House, now this. Which version of you wrote this book? Well, that's the greatest question that you could have asked me because I think it's a compilation of that. That would have been my pitch to you, that I took my working-class background, my observation of 38 years on Wall Street, both at Goldman but also as an entrepreneur, my failed White House communication experience, but my Ph.D. in the way Washington works, having been in political fundraising for 30 years— And plus my observations in the media, I sort of welded those together to create that book.

5:09 So it's a fusion of the political economy, what actually happened on Wall Street that affected Main Street, and what are some of the things that we could do better. I guess when we look at the current state of the US, and I also want to speak to my audience as well. So my audience is, I'll give you the breakdown. Like half of them are working jobs and they're nine to fives, super ambitious. Other half are entrepreneurs. And I don't think that all the, I think the people that are working jobs are stressed out because the jobs that they have right now don't have the same security pensions that my parents had. And I think that the entrepreneur cohort is, I think some of them feel like entrepreneurship is the only way to survive because life seems very stressful.

5:51 What's your take? Because you have been entrepreneur. You've seen the working class nine to five. I think we have to look at the world the way it is, and we have to look at the world from a perspective. you know, not a normative state, meaning I hate the following words, should and ought. So I have five kids. My kids say, well, I should have gotten into this school or I ought to have gotten a 36 on the ACT. I'm like, well, that's not how the world works. This is how the world is today. So take my dad as an example. My dad had a great working class job. If he was doing that we would have been on the poverty line. He would have probably needed an EPT cord. The wages for his job went down 26%.

6:35 So we have to deal with the world the way it is, not the way we want it to be or the way it ought to be. So if you're talking to somebody that's on the job now, What's going right about the job? What's going wrong about the job? Where do they think they're going to be? I have a friend of mine who's in biotech. They have a great couple of drug products in the small niche biotech firm. If they don't get the next round of financing, he's going to lose his job. He's got anxiety about it. He's done a great job. He's a very professional guy, but he's going to lose his job. So what I say to him, start looking for a job. I mean, let's not worry about it. Start looking for a job. You then start creating some options. Your best place to look for a job is when you have a job.

7:17 Start looking for a job. If they get the funding, stop looking for a job. But now all of a sudden people know that you're available to them. And by the way, your boss is cool. Your boss knows if the funding doesn't come in, you're not going to be there. You know, I mean, I've had situations where I've had to, I've expanded my firm, and unfortunately I have contracted my firm. And these are some of the hardest things to do in the world. And so I was very famously fired from the White House, but I also got fired from Goldman Sachs when I was a young kid. I was 27 years old. They had hired too many people into the real estate department. It was the Gulf War. We had a real estate recession in New York, and it was first in – I'm sorry, it was last in, first out. I got fired.

7:58 And so I could have taken it very personally, and I could have saw myself as a failure. But I looked at it like, okay, I got fired. I'm going to be nice to the guy firing me because that person could help me find another job. I'm going to go find another job. And then I've been on the other side of it, Scott, where I've had to tell people, look, I'm sorry. The firm is contracting. You know, I let, I don't know, 15 people go during the global financial crisis. During COVID, I had to let some people go. You know, I gave them nice... extended pay and I gave them severances and things like that. But my point is, you can't, the number one thing, whether you're stressed out as an entrepreneur or you're stressed out at a job, don't play the victim. Because the worst human emotion that you can have if you want to be successful is self-pity.

8:41 Because the minute you start thinking badly or woe is me or this is not going my way, it's no good. Okay. Have you heard of the word pronoia? I've used the word before I haven't heard this before. So P-R-O-N-O-I-A, pronoia. That's opposed to paranoia? Yeah, that's the opposite of paranoia. So you have to have a belief in your heart that the universe is bending towards you, and the universe is bending towards you for good. And you have to have a belief in your heart that you are going to attract people that want to help you with your life. Okay, so if something bad happens and you are pro-NOIAC, you're like, okay, I'm going to slough that off. That's a speed bump on the road to my destination.

9:22 You know, I think people make a mistake in thinking that, okay, I'm going to have an arc that goes up at a 45-degree angle and I'm going to have this stress-free life. And maybe you're looking at filtered people on the Internet and those filtered people look like that that's happening to them. But I guarantee you everybody's living an unfiltered life. I feel like a lot of people right now who are not happy, they default to the victim and they hope that somebody is going to come save them. And I think that from what I've experienced in my life, it doesn't matter who's in government. No one's really going to come save you. If you even want to advocate for your own health, I mean, you've got to find the right doctor. You've got to advocate for the right treatment.

10:04 I mean, go ahead. Sorry, you had a comment on that. for yourself. I mean, listen, I mean, there's a couple of axiomatic facts. The quicker you understand these axiomatic facts, the better you're going to do in your life. Nobody cares about you, number one, okay? What other people think of you is none of your business. And by the way, they're not thinking of you. Okay, so let's go default to number one. Nobody cares about you. Number two, no one is coming to save you. And by the way, your parents, even if they want to save you, and nobody wants you to do better than your parents, it's hard for them to save you. They're in a different generation. They may not understand the dilemmas that you're faced in your career or the economy as you see it versus the economy that they worked in.

10:48 for the 30 years that they were around before you were born or the 35 years, whatever it might be. And so no one can help you. And the last thing, and this is the most important thing, it's a few things every day that make you special. It's not one big thing. It's a few things every day. So if you decide, I'm going to take the next hour, I'm going to go through my Rolodex, and I'm going to call 20 people. And I'm going to rebuild that relationship with them or start that relationship. You're now so far ahead of the game than the average person. Average person is showing up, they're doing 9 to 5, 9 to 6, and they work a little overtime, but they're thinking about home, thinking about watching a sporting match or relaxing to a podcast.

11:32 You want to be, you can't be 50% in. You can't be 90% in. You got to be all in. And you got to get that in your head. I'm going to go the extra mile. I'm going to do what it takes to make this podcast a success, my business a success, my body a success, whatever it might be. You can't be this much in because it's not differentiating enough. You see the point I'm making? the book, All the Wrong Moves. It's about these decisions that three leaders made that led to Trump. This is what you've been writing about now. I think that I try to step back and say to myself, okay, I've been in my adult life, started in age 25, 1989.

12:16 I graduated from Harvard Law School. First job was at Goldman Sachs. It's now 38 years later. And I'm sitting around observing my career and I'm observing what happened to the global economy and to the U.S. What are some of the things that we did wrong? And I submit to you in the book, follow the money in the United States. The country is about money. It was about money in 1776. It was about money in the Civil War. I mean, it was a fight about slavery, which was tied to money. Okay, it was about money in the Great Depression. It ultimately became about money after the end of the Second World War. So you follow the money, or as I say in the book, the money point of view of history. I can tell you where things are going.

12:56 And I'm just simply saying that we got a lot of things right. We were running a budget surplus at the end of 2000. You know, my contemporaries remember it. You may not remember it, but we had a $240 billion budget surplus at the end of 2000. And things were generally going in the right direction. And then, wham, we got hit with 9-11. It's 25 years ago. Seems like a long time, but it's a short time. And in that 25-year period of time, we changed the trajectory of the United States. We went from $2.5 trillion of budget deficit to $40 trillion of budget deficit. We took a group of people that were in the lower middle income people that if you interviewed them, Scott, 25, 30 years ago, they felt economically aspirational.

13:43 Like maybe they were going to make it or one of their kids were going to make it. And in that period of time, we made those people economically desperation. So how did we do that? And so I believe there are three big catastrophic mistakes that we made. And it's not a partisan book. It's not a polemic or a tribal book. It's an observation. It's an objective observation of decision-making by both Republicans and Democrats that By the way, very well intended, good people. There was nothing malevolent about it, but the decisions didn't go the way that these people thought that they would. Number one, we let China into the World Trade Organization. They come in with emerging market status.

14:26 They're able to sell their goods unfettered to Canada, United States, the West. We accept tariffs and protected markets from them. They do this for 20 years unchecked. It's okay to come in with the same rights as the Dominican Republic when you're a poor country. But when you become larger than the economy of Germany, well, then guess what? For the WTO standards, you have to be treated like that. Okay, that caused a crisis in our country. We bled out jobs, we bled out manufacturing, and it changed the landscape of a lot of the flyover states, and it hurt the country, and it hurt people's disposable income.

15:06 The second thing that we did is we went to war after 9-11. We did two wars, one in Afghanistan in 01, one in March of 2003 in Iraq. And we cut taxes two times going into those wars, once in 01, once in 03. It's the only time in our history that we cut taxes going into a major war. We usually raise taxes. And so we set this deficit trajectory like this. You want to talk a K-shape? People are talking about a K-shape economy. How about a K-shape of tax revenues and deficit spending? That's what's happened in the United States. And so I explained what we did. I explained the legislation that we broke and the policies that we changed to create this massive deficit spending.

15:52 It's really hurt the country because remember, guys, if you take anything from this interview, deficit spending is unfunded tax liability. You're going to pay the price for the deficit spending. And how do we pay it? Well, in our country, we pay it through the most pernicious and the most regressive form of taxation. That's inflation because it's a sneaky way to get people, right? And so now you have a dollar, but guess what? Now you only have 70 cents of purchasing power because of what we did. But then what is the person who's reading this book? This has all happened. The situation is what it is. It brings it back to your first point. You can't be upset, but you can't let that influence how you live your life.

16:34 Like, what does the person do with this information? So that's a great question. So I believe... You have to, in other words, really get to the root of a problem. You have to understand the problem, where the problem is emanating from, so that you can change the problem. And so I believe, starting with the Ross Perot election in 1992, the Democrats and the Republicans literally formed a duopoly or they formed a cartel. And so Ross Perot enters this race in 1992 as a reformed candidate. He gets 20% of the vote. That's telling you, if you had a consumer focus group, that 20% of the population doesn't like Democrats, doesn't like Republicans. That's 40% now.

17:15 Go look at the registrants in this country. 42% of them are independents. Then there's Democrats. Then there's Republicans. And so the largest voting bloc in the country doesn't like either of the two parties. And what these two parties did is they tightened their duopoly. They made it very hard for third parties to enter. Right. Trump tried to run in the year 2000. He said, no way I could do it because they wouldn't even let me get on the ballot in all 50 states. Bobby Kennedy couldn't get on the ballot in all 50 states. They have all these sneaky provisions. And so we have two parties. that half of the people generally don't like. And then what do they do? They vote the extremes in those two parties.

17:58 This all happened to us. We have to understand how it happened so that we can unravel it and make it easier for people to get candidates in the mix that are a little bit more moderate and a little bit more commonsensical. And so just quickly on the last decision, we bailed out the bank, Scott. We gave a trillion dollars to the banks in the 2008, 2009 time period, helped the banks, restored the banks. But we didn't give any money to the middle class people. We didn't give money to the lower class. No debt relief, no mortgage relief, no rental relief. But the fat cat bankers, they got a trillion dollars. And guess what they did with it? They paid 5,000 people. a $1 million a year bonus or more in the year that they got that government bailout money.

18:45 I was telling you, that hurt. That created a lot of anger in the country. It created the Tea Party movement. It created Occupy Wall Street. It really hurt the country. And that anger manifested itself. It was almost like those two groups had a baby. They got married, had a baby, and they named the baby MAGA, or they named the baby the Bernie Sanders or the AOC movement. This is what led to it. Exactly. This left-leaning and right-leaning populism, in my opinion, this is how we caused it. So let's analyze it and then let's unravel it so that we can make better decisions going forward to fix the political ills and some of the economic ills of the country.

19:26 I think what confuses me and probably a lot of people that are very moderate is we don't subscribe to extremism on either side. But we all deal with the downstream effects of this extremism. And now we have to just navigate it and live our life and figure it out. I'll just give you an example. If you open the primary process, some states have open primaries. They usually generate moderate candidates. Remember, these campaigns are marketing competitions. open the primary process, give the independent the right to go into the Democratic primary or into the Republican primary, guess what happens? The people start moderating their views.

20:06 They want to win. But if you don't have to moderate your views and you're preaching to the extreme end of your party because the primary process is closed, then you're going to get candidates that you and I are like, oh, holding our nose to the candidates. Do people, because you're so, now you're so deeply involved and understand politics so well, do you find that people are checking out, like people that should be more involved, that should be running, that should have a say, they're just like, I'm over this? And the politicians want that. There's a voting bloc in this country. 100 million plus people. They vote the exact same way in every single election. Incredibly powerful voting block.

20:49 It's the non-voter. Every single election, they don't vote. But they're eligible, but they've checked out. They say, oh, it's not going to matter. I'm not going to vote. But just imagine if you had an entrepreneurial politician that could come into the mix, explain and diagnose the problem, and then convince the non-voter to come into the swimming pool and participate in the process. See, the establishment politician doesn't want that. They have a formula for success. Block third parties, gerrymander their districts to protect themselves, create high incumbency rates on both sides. They want two people playing in the game. each other. They don't want any third parties coming in. And yet the American people have given you a Yelp rating.

21:32 They said, you suck. Okay. The Congress has a 14% approval rating. It's like slightly above the North Korean dictator. Okay. Okay. But yet you got a 96% incumbency reelection rate and it doesn't reconcile itself because they've got the system game for themselves. And I'm just describing how they did it. And I'm suggesting how we can break it. Life at the Speed of Play is a success story partner. Now, this is a book by Mark Pincus, the guy who founded Zynga. I've actually had him on the show. I met him in person and Reid Hoffman wrote the foreword, calling him one of the best idea people in Silicon Valley. The book is Life at the Speed of Play, Launch Products People Love. About 170 pages.

22:14 It's already a national bestseller. It's his framework for figuring out whether an idea is actually worth going after before you put serious time and money into it. not theory, the way he actually does it. And he's repeatedly built successful businesses. On top of that, you can read it in a weekend. It can change your entire life and give you the right direction if you're an entrepreneur. So right now, if you go to getmarksbook.com slash success, you get two copies for $32, that's $16 each. Mark is paying for the second copy himself because he wants you to give it to somebody, a friend who's been sitting on an idea, someone who needs to push, whoever. That's getmarksbook.com slash success. Mark with a K, buy one, second one's free. My Fitness Pal is a success story partner. Now, a quick story. A few weeks ago, I was in the middle of a very heavy recording week.

22:56 So five episodes back to back. By Wednesday, I could feel it. I felt tired. And I pulled up my food log in the My Fitness Pal app, and I could see why I felt tired. I was heavily under eating. I was not keeping up with my meals. My macros were all off. On weeks like that, staying on top of your fuel and your food and what you eat is the difference between being sharp on episode five and being flat. And that's the kind of thing you only catch when you're paying attention. And that's why I keep logging every single meal I eat in the MyFitnessPal app. It's not because I'm obsessing over numbers. It's not because I'm trying to diet. Because I'm trying to have an awareness about what I eat in the day. And the app makes it so easy to maintain that awareness.

23:39 I can point my camera at a plate with meal scan. It'll tell me exactly what I'm eating, all my macronutrients, proteins, fats, carbs. There's an intermittent fasting tracker. If I want to intermittent fast, it keeps my eating window honest. And it all syncs with my watch and all of my fitness apps. And it just runs in the background. See, food is a foundation for energy, sleep, recovery, performance. It is the one input that you cannot skip. So do yourself a favor, track what you're eating. It'll make you feel better, perform better in everything that you do. Go to podcasts.myfitnesspal.com and use code SCOTT, all uppercase for 50% off My Fitness Pal Premium. That's podcasts.myfitnesspal.com, code SCOTT.

24:20 So for people that are upset and checked out, do you feel like there's a light at the end of the tunnel because politics really, I feel, hasn't changed much? Or is the advice, check out and focus on yourself, be selfish, focus on your own career? No, you certainly have to focus on yourself. But let me talk to you for a second. Okay, you live in Florida. But even in Florida, the government is a 40% partner in your life. Okay, I live in New York. I'm a minority partner in my own life. My general partners are Donald Trump, Mayor Mondani, and Governor Hochul. Okay, because if a dollar comes into me, I can only get 48 cents.

25:00 I'm only allowed to keep 48 cents of it. So I submit to everybody listening to this, even if you are in a lower tax bracket than me, These people are in your life. They're your partners in your life. Good executive leadership matters, Scott. Good executive leadership is a cleaner road. It's a better sanitation system, a better subway. It's easier for the tourists to come in and buy things from your shop. If the trains are running on time and they're clean, the tourists will come in from New Jersey and New York. They'll go to your restaurant. They'll go to a Broadway play. So good executive leadership matters. matters in our society.

25:41 And so if you check out, you are failing at your responsibility to help the civic side of your life. Listen, you can do it. And it feels like most of us are doing it. And so you want to end up in a bob-wired McMansion living there in your security perimetered house while your fellow neighbors are suffering? Yeah, we could do it. could be heading that way. I don't want that to happen. I want the people around me to do well. I want my neighbors to be like, yeah, Anthony may have more money than me. He may have less money than me. But you know what? My kids are going to have a shot at having a great aspirational life here in America. Why don't more entrepreneurs get involved in politics?

26:24 Because it's stupid. It's stupid to get involved in politics. You know, like James Baker had one of the best lines ever. He wrote a memoir. He was the former Secretary of State, Reagan's Chief of Staff. He's 98 years old. He's a legendary guy. He wrote a memoir about himself, and the title of it was, Don't Go Into Politics. And the first chapter was his father telling him not to go into politics. And he explains all the reasons why. It's a nasty business. It's brutish. You can get kicked out of office very quickly. You're on top of the heap one second. You're at the bottom of the heap the next second. And so it's also partisan. It's cost me. It's hurt my business. It's hurt my business. I'm a politically minded person.

27:06 I have an opinion. You may not like my opinion. You won't buy from me. Remember Michael Jordan. Michael Jordan was selling sneakers. Still is. But in the 90s, working for the Bulls, arguably the best player ever. Well, are you a Democrat or Republican? Take a stand. He's like, hey, man. I don't want to take a stand. The Republicans, you know, they buy sneakers too. Dolly Parton. Dolly Parton had 20 opportunities to criticize Trump. She never did. 20 opportunities to criticize or praise Joe Biden. She never did. It doesn't make great business sense to do what I'm doing. No, because a lot of, I think about the entrepreneurs that have tried to get involved, and I don't even know all of them. You probably know, but I think about Bloomberg. And he was like, I'm out of, I'm done.

27:48 I think Kevin O'Leary for a very brief moment. I guess Trump is entrepreneurial to a degree, but he's the one who isn't like a politician for life. But there's probably others too, but I mean... Son, you know, I have my issues with Donald Trump, but I will just say this, that on paper... He could have been a great because he was a non-politician. He could have been a post-partisan politician. He could have transcended the tribalism. He could have acted like a business leader. You know, he didn't do that. I think that's what people were wanting from him. Listen, he campaigned on not going to war. He's in Iraq now. I want to talk about decisions because this whole book is about these key decisions that turned the U.S. into what it is today.

28:36 What are some of the lessons that people can learn from these decisions that were made, not maliciously? I think there's many different lessons, but I think we are fallible. We make pride-based decisions, ego-based decisions. we have a little bit of a consensus thought pattern. You know, your coach or your father maybe said, or your mom said, you know, you're the weighted average of the five people you hang out with. And so you get the confirmed biases of the people that you hang out with. And so we develop these consensus ideas. And by the way, what do we want? We don't want to be out of the consensus. I want to get invited to the country club. You know, I want to go to the football game with you. You know, I don't want to tell you something that you don't like.

29:17 And we do that a lot. And so it's like a lot of groupthink took place in Washington, and they didn't think through some of the ramifications of the decisions. Let China in, no problem. You want China to grow. You want to sell goods into their market, no problem. But hey, guys, when they're the size of Germany, start treating them like Germany. And it's all about groupthink that causes the bad decisions. No question. It's crazy because you'd think that at that level, people would have the confidence not to follow the herd. We're people. You know this because you've met a lot of famous people. You yourself are famous. You have this wonderfully high-profile, super successful podcast and social media feed.

29:58 But you're a person. And I guarantee you've made some mistakes. If the book that I wrote... Again, I didn't want to be pedantic in the book, and I'm not being a Monday morning armchair quarterback. If I wrote a book about my mistakes, it would have been the size of a phone book. I mean, you wouldn't have had enough time in the podcast for me to go over all of them. So I'm not sitting here saying, oh, that guy. Barack Obama did a lot of good things. I can list them. Bush actually did a lot of good things. I could list them. So did Clinton. But here are some mistakes that got made that did change the trajectory of America's finances at the federal level. It changed the directory about the way we identify with ourselves in terms of how we're going to fight with each other.

30:41 And unfortunately, it did create a sense of haves and have-nots that there's a two-tiered system. So, you know, wait a minute, the bankers are rich, so you're going to make them richer? And what about me? I'm going to lose my house. Okay, so I got it. I'm losing my house, but the banker's getting a $1 million mortgage. Can you see how that could upset somebody? Of course. So when you, do you have, because you've operated in both arenas, in politics and as an entrepreneur, I think that most people listening to this podcast have never been involved in politics. Yeah. And stay out of politics. James Baker was right. Okay, but go ahead. I'm sorry. No, I'm just curious if you have a mental model for decision making that you've learned over your career that would be helpful for the audience. You are really a good questioner.

31:21 So the mental model for me is a very hard thing to do. Probably the hardest thing you could do in your life. Get your ego out of things. When I made the decision to go work for Donald Trump, I was not the right person for that job. I also was too combative for Donald Trump. Donald Trump wants somebody to be more pliant, more flattering. And he doesn't want the bilateral relationship as much as he wants unilateral praise. and then him have a unilateral relationship in terms of doing things. It's not bilateral. It's not a business relationship. It's not a give and take. I missized that. I paid dearly for it. But I knew better.

32:01 So why did I do it? I did it because my ego was talking to me. Oh, my God. I grew up in a blue-collar neighborhood. I went to Tufts and Harvard Law School. I worked at Goldman. I built these businesses. Oh, now I'm going to go work for the American president. I'm a big shot. My wife was telling me, you know, you're crazy. It's not going to fit. It's not going to work. 11 days later, I got my ass handed to me. I got shot out of a cannon out of the North Portico of the White House and rolled in margarita glass after they skimmed me alive. And I let my pride and I let my ego influence my decision-making. So the big message in the book is let's take a beat.

32:42 We may not know everything. We have to seek answers from people that are necessarily smarter than us and get their advice. And oh, by the way, even when we do that, there's some fallibility to our decision-making. You can be the best decision-maker in the world and still get 30%, 40% of your decisions wrong. By the way, in money management, if you did that, you're a multibillionaire. One of your quotes that I love, and you touched on this earlier, money and ambition have always lived in tension with ideals. So I'm curious, how do you define the difference between ambition and ego? I think it's okay to be ambitious, but I think you have to check yourself because, you know, I mean, there are things I could have done on Wall Street.

33:23 I could have been a way more ruthless operator on Wall Street than I actually was. It probably would have made me a little bit more money. You know, it could have been richer. But I'm not sure my quality of life would have necessarily been better. You know, I've run into a lot of people who make the extra dollar, but for some reason... If it wasn't enough, they needed two extra dollars. You know what I mean? And you can create a pattern of misery, so you got to be really careful. I just, you know, for me, the way I look at things, I say, I went to Wall Street because I had interest in business. I've had a great career on Wall Street. It hasn't been a perfect career. I took exogenous risks. I could have just stayed as a happy camper on Wall Street and not gone to work for Donald Trump.

34:04 My life would have been totally different. Like a bit of ambition is okay, but for the right reasons. And, and also I think that you can't lose yourself. That's where the ego comes into it. Like if you, if you're, if you're pursuing ambition just because you think you deserve the thing or you are the best, or you're pursuing something that actually wasn't even your goal, but like the opportunity to work with the president. Well, all of a sudden now the ego gets into play. You already have the ambition, but then like the ego is a fuel on the fire. Yeah. Yeah. So ambition is healthy, but you got to make sure it's morally balanced, it's morally anchored. You want to sleep well at night. You're a young guy. When you get to be my age, I guarantee you're going to make a series of decisions.

34:45 Some of them are going to go really well. You're going to pat yourself on the back. Some of them are not going to go well. You're going to be like, what the hell happened? Okay. And so I'm just saying I've been humbled by life. I've been humbled by markets. And I'm just saying if we can acknowledge our mistakes or we can see the path that we're on caused us some hardship and we can admit that to each other without tribalism and without the rancor that you usually get in politics, I think we can fix it. How fast do you forgive yourself when you make the wrong decision? That is the issue, right? I mean, ultimately, in a Christian faith, you get taught to forgive others. If you really want to help out, you got to forgive yourself.

35:26 And I'm really good at it now, and I really sucked at it when I was your age. Like, if I made a mistake when I was your age, I would kick myself in the pants. By the time I got to 53, I got fired from the White House. I was like, all right, I'm not going to wear this millstone. I'm not waking up in the morning with this millstone of regret on my neck. And, oh, my God, I did something stupid in the White House. Let me go kick myself in the pants. I'm not doing it. Take the millstone of regret off of your neck. Put it down beside you and go forward. You know, forgiving yourself is the superpower. You could be in a bad relationship. You could be in a bad business partnership.

36:06 You could be in a bad political situation. And things could go badly for you. And some of it could be your fault. Some of it could be the luck of the draw. But whatever's your fault, forgive yourself. That's the toughest thing to do. And it's like, I think that people's success in life, however you define that, but let's say business success, is directly correlated to how fast they can forgive themselves for their mistakes. It is very hard because you got yelled at as a kid. Your mother told you not to touch the stove. Your teachers yelled at you. Your football coach yelled at you. And so when you're yelling at yourself and you're tight in between your own ears, that chant can be deafening.

36:47 But you got to forgive yourself. Because if you think about the very public firing, that's like the ultimate. I got crushed, man. Come on. Listen. Are you ready? Ready? Okay. Try not to fall off the chair. My wife files for divorce on me on July 7th. I go to the White House on the 21st of July. I'm in the Boy Scout camp on Monday the 24th. Deirdre's pregnant with our second baby. Okay. He's due on August 8th. She gives premature birth due to the stress of everything. And the baby comes out on the 24th. Beautiful baby. He's nine years old now.

37:28 Okay, so James is born. I missed the birth of my son. So let's go over this for your viewers and listeners, okay? I'm fired from having a bad day. Let me tell you something, Scott. You have my cell phone number. As long as it's not cancer, you call me when you're having a bad day, okay? Here's my day. I'm fired. The 31st of July, 2017. My wife has filed for divorce. I missed the birth of my son. I'm fired from the White House publicly. I'm being called a Jersey Shore cast member by Bill Maher on The Bill Maher Show. I think Stephen Colbert called me Tony Soprano on The Potomac. You can't be both those people, ladies and gentlemen, okay? I'm getting eviscerated in the press. I'm getting eviscerated by the late-night comedians, destroyed by the cable news pundits.

38:12 What am I going to do? I'm going to be a big baby. A lot of people would. What am I going to be? I'm going to pick myself up. Yeah. Okay. My wife was right about a lot of the things that were going wrong in the marriage. I got to take responsibility for that. I got to rebuild myself. I got to get her trust back. I got to make the marriage work. I got to go back and repair my business. I got to go, you know, I had a PR guy that told me that I had such a disaster going on, he told me to move to Tuscany, okay? He said, hey, I mean, you're never recovering from this. Hey, five years from now, why don't you, you're a rich enough guy, buy a villa in Tuscany. Why don't you sit in Tuscany for the next five years? I looked at him, I said, Howard. And by the way, he passed. By the way, I love this guy.

38:52 He passed a few years ago. I said, Howard, I didn't pay you for your advice. I paid you for your Rolodex. Give me Stephen Colbert's number. Bill Boyd. I got to go on the air. I got to go. This two-dimensional caricature that they created of me and that high profile firing nine years ago, I have to blow myself back up. And so people can see all the facets of me, the good and bad of me. my career, my legacy education, the things that I'm able to bring to this society. And then some people will like that and accept it. And some people will never accept it. And I have to not care. You see what I'm saying? I get it. And so if you're having a bad day, give me a call.

39:34 As long as it's not a hell of a reason, I'll cheer you up. You'll put it in perspective. I will. I'll be able to do that for you. One of the most powerful ideas that I've heard from somebody is to schedule your misery, meaning that if shit happens, you give yourself 15 minutes, 30 minutes to just grieve and then it's over. I like it. Let me tell you why I like that because, and that's good. I'll probably start to lose it. You have to ventilate. You can't pretend that something that's bothering you isn't bothering you. You can't be one of those guys that's into toxic positivity. You know what I mean? You just got your ass kicked. Oh, la-di-da, I didn't get my ass kicked.

40:15 No, you got your ass kicked. Deal with it, absorb it, but now you got to move on from it. You have to do that, otherwise you make yourself sick. I think it's useful because I think people just sit in it for forever. Or they ignore it. They either code over it and pretend it didn't happen, which makes them sick too. HubSpot is a success story partner. Now, every entrepreneur, founder, CEO is listening right now needs to pay attention. I have a question for you. When a buyer asks AI for a solution or a product that your business sells, does your business come up? The answer is that most companies have no idea. They don't know if their name shows up in any of the AI tools, chat, perplexity, Claude.

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43:56 Like this was not your first exposure to something bad happening. say that working for Trump was the stupidest decision I ever made, just flat out was. Okay? And I own it, and I'll have to own that for the rest of my life. But there was a silver lining. You probably wouldn't know who I am if I didn't work for Trump. I wouldn't be on your show. I probably wouldn't be able to have the standing to write the book that I just wrote. I have my own podcast which does reasonably well. I don't think I could be mentoring as many young people if I didn't have that You know, like there's a silver, that's another thing people need to think about. There's this, as long as you're breathing, you're above ground, living another day, there's a silver lining to your life experiences.

44:42 Did that experience change how you make decisions yourself? No question, yeah, 100%. I think a big, back-breaking decision, I take a lot more time with. I'm way more thoughtful with it. Jeff Bezos has a framework that he categorizes different decisions into decisions that will, basically you can walk back from that decision. So for example, if you choose to go out on a limb and reach out to somebody who you're not comfortable reaching out to, or you choose to, post a new type of content that you've never posted before. Like these are, these are reversible decisions, but irreversible decisions.

45:22 So who you marry, maybe who you go into business with, maybe working for Trump. These are, these are not easy things to walk back from. these are the things that you spend the most time thinking about. And most people overthink the reversible decisions and they don't spend enough time thinking about the irreversible. Yeah, listen, I think it's a really good point. But I also think that, you know, He married Mackenzie Bezos and they built the business together. If you read about their life story, she got billions of dollars in that divorce settlement as a result of building that business with him successfully. And I think that there's a time and place for things. I mean, I don't have Jeff Bezos here, but I don't think he would know he's got beautiful children as a result of that marriage.

46:07 I don't think he regrets that. You know, I had a, No, it's not about regret. It's about the thought that goes into those decisions. But it was irreversible, right? I mean, I married somebody very young. She's a very lovely person. She's a great mom. We ended up getting divorced. We were probably married too young. That was an irreversible decision. But I'm not sure I would have gone back and reversed it. I got three beautiful kids out of it. And she did a great job raising them. And so to me... I guess I would say a little bit different. By the way, far be it from me, he's way more successful than me, Jeff Bezos. So I'm not, I mean, I get his point. But I guess what I would say, there are some irreversible decisions that you're going to get on the wrong side of that you're going to inevitably make no matter what.

46:54 I don't know anybody that's got out of life and said, you know, you're the 20 potentially irreversible decisions. I went 20 for 20. I got every single one of those right. I understand where you're coming from. It's a good way to think about making decisions, but it's also dangerous at the same time because if you do end up in a supposedly irreversible decision and you realize it's the wrong one, you can't get too hard on yourself for that. That's my point. I mean, what are we going to do? We're going to make these decisions, and whether we like it or not, we're going to get some of them wrong. But I think that's the pathos that I would like an entrepreneur to understand. Go make the decisions. Have an imperfect, you know, Reid Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn, said, if your website's perfect, you waited too long to start the company.

47:39 You know, make the, put the clip out, Scott. It may not be perfect, okay? I mean, this is how the podcast is built, just iterating a thousand times. That's what I'm saying. And by the way, we are in a weird environment this way culturally. Talk about our culture. My parents, perhaps your grandparents, were in a homogenized, sanitized culture. The lights were on in the television station. The presenter had a perfect tie on. His hair had more hairspray than Joan Rivers, you know, and he was sitting there reading the news. We don't do that anymore. We now have a culture that rewards authenticity and rawness.

48:20 Literally, the more open you are and the more honest you are with somebody, and they can smell it on you now. They smell it on you. Is Scott a real guy? Or is he a BSer? You have such a big following that people have bought in. You're a real guy. And so you have to like, for me, I'd rather tell you this group. It may not make me look well. I may not have done the right thing at certain times in my life. But at least you'll know that I'm human. At least you'll know that, hey, I'm bringing myself to the game. I'm not trying to make you think something differently than what my actual authenticity is. And I think that that's a superpower in this world right now. I think so too. When everybody's trying to like. People want that.

49:00 Everyone's trying to be something they're not. Everyone's trying to show up. You can't. I know. People listening to this, like I mentioned before, there are half of them are entrepreneurs. Half of them are working the nine to five, various incomes, various degrees of success. But the question, the most important question is, is the American dream still alive and well for all of them? It is. It's harder. It's more narrow. You know, if my dad was born in 1965 and had the same job versus 1935, his wages would have been less for the same amount of work. We wouldn't have been able to afford the house that we're in.

49:40 You know, we were able to live a nice middle class upbringing because of the economic times associated with the time that my father was doing his work. that work has changed. He would have had to have changed jobs or he would have gotten a different skill set. And so, but if you're saying to me, can you start de novo in this country and make something of yourself? Yes. But I think what happens now though, you may have burdensome school debt. You know, I want to be an entrepreneur. But I couldn't be. I had during school debt. I wrote, I was in the Harvard Law Library the week of my graduation. So this is June of 1989. So I really date myself. And I wrote my goals, manifesting my goals.

50:24 And one of the things I wrote, well, I don't have, I wanna be an entrepreneur. So I wrote, I have to pay off my school debt before I could be an entrepreneur. Because if I fail at being an entrepreneur, I'll be able to pay off the school debt. So it took me seven years to completely pay off my school debt. It put me in a position to think like an entrepreneur. But imagine today, maybe it would have taken me 10 years. Maybe it'd take me 14 years. I don't know. My point is it's harder today than it was back then. But it's not impossible. And I think you've got to dream really big in our society because anything can happen in our society. And I think that a really powerful message, because it's harder and I don't want people to be upset and depressed by that, is that you really only have to figure it out once in life, whatever it is.

51:16 I think it's a good point. If you figure out the business, say it takes 15 years instead of seven. If you figure it out, you know this. You'll make more money than you know what to do with. You know, so interestingly, our philosophies are pretty much in sync. I would just add something to it. Stay in the game. Right? What did Woody Allen say? 80% of life is just showing up. Stay in the game. You know, I got hit three or four times. I could have said, oh, it's not for me and left the game. 2008, I was really close to going out of business. One of my friends was a Goldman partner. He was doing really well. He was like, you should shut this down. I'm not shutting it down. I'm going to go down in a blaze of glory. It's 22 years later. You've got to stay in the game.

51:56 You've got to stay lit and jacked for the game. Where do you want to send people? Your social website, all that? Well, I mean, listen, you can follow me on Instagram at at Scaramucci or on X at Scaramucci. That's sort of my handle everywhere. You can go to Amazon or buy the book or Barnes & Noble or your local bookseller. And I guess this is what I would say about the book. The goal of the book... was to write a short book that you could finish in a few settings. Hopefully you'll learn something from the book. And hopefully the book is a lot of fun, because I wrote about a lot of crazy stories that have happened in my life. And, you know, the reviews have been generally good on those categories. He's fantastic. Funny enough, and I learned something, and he is making a persuasive case that all the stuff that we're dealing with today is fixable.

52:42 So hopefully the book will provide somebody with some hope among all the other things. What do you want that main takeaway to be? Hope, but go a level deeper for the reader. I think it's a humbling book. I think the main takeaway would be, wow, I'm going to be a little less critical. of the opposing side. If I'm a Democrat, I can be a little less critical of the Republican. If I'm a Republican, I'd be a little less critical of the Democrat. That these big decisions have a lot of unknowns attached to them, and it's very humbling when you're in the seat. But for the grace of God, I could make those bad decisions myself. And so rather than dwell on and point blame at people and do all that sort of nonsense, let's fix it.

53:24 Yeah, I love that. I love the idea that the... The best future for the U.S. is to remove all the hate, all the anger, all the animosity. That's it. Because if you do that, you know, look, it's not going to be perfect. Listen, they were spitting and cussing at Jackie Robinson when he crossed the color line. We had slaves in this country. Okay, it's not going to be perfect. They told my Italian grandmother to go back to the country she came from. It's not a perfect country, but no country is. But it's a good country, and it's a country that's trying to get things closer to perfection. And I think we have to hold up to that ideal. At the beginning, I mentioned you've gone through about five different lives, right?

54:06 The working class kid, Goldman Sachs, your own firm, White House, now this version of yourself, author, podcaster, still running your hedge fund. If you could go back and tell 20-year-old Anthony the most important piece of advice that you wish he had, what would it be and why? The number one thing is what we talked about with other people. What other people think of you as none of your business. I was probably too concerned about that at age 20. appearances. Appearances lead to ego. You make ego-based decisions. I would say, hey, you're going to have a great ride. It's going to be a little crazy. You're having a great run. But take yourself less seriously. Care less about what other people think about you. Take more risk and enjoy the ride and recognize there are bumps on the ride.

54:51 It's supposed to be bumpy, Scott. It's supposed to be bumpy. I think those are things I would want to tell my 20-year-old self.