Scott Galloway's Stoic Advice for Founders & Entrepreneurs | My First Million

Key Takeaways

You're a big proponent of stoicism and that seems like a pretty stoic way to be. Give us the like, you know, there's a lot of people listening to this right now that may be familiar with stoicism, don't practice, don't don't kind of know how it applies to their life. Like make your pitch. What's why is sto why stoicism matters to somebody? >> Well, just for your own mental and emotional health. And Ryan Holidayiday is kind of my Yoda on stoicism. And he distills it this way. Life is not about what happens to you. You can't control that. But you can't control how you respond to what happens to you. And I've tried to always remember that. And I have trouble practicing it. But, you know, the the ultimate stoicism piece of art in modern history or modern media is Brokeback Mountain. If you he can't fix it, you got to stand it. And that is try and focus on the things you can control. And you can control your emotions. It's very difficult to control what happens to you. And you know, just also recognize, and this is more atheism than stoicism, everyone on this podcast, everyone we know, everyone we care about, what they think of us, they're going to be dead in a hundred years. In a blink of the history, nothing you say or do or what anyone else thinks of you is going to matter for very long. And something that really has helped me when I was embarrassed or I thought I didn't equip myself very well is what you realize is just imagine yourself when someone says or does something stupid. You said you think to yourself, "Oh, that was stupid." And then you go back to thinking about yourself and you know people aren't thinking about you, your wealth, your failures, your successes as much as you are. And so the key is just trying to be comfortable with yourself and comfortable in your own skin. And not only that, really kind of focus on what your spouse thinks of you. Is your spouse happy? Do you have a good relationship with your kids? Because what Twitter thinks of you really isn't that important. And because I had so much trouble actually putting my emotions to that logical notion. I know it doesn't matter what people on Twitter or the Twitter mob think of me, but I couldn't emotionally separate myself from it. I don't have those skills. So, a role model of mine is a guy named Sam Harris. He's like, "Oh, I got off Twitter. I can't handle that." He's like, "Why don't you get off of Twitter?" I'm like, "Yeah, I can." So, I stopped I'm off of Twitter for the last nine months, and it's been one of the most accreative things to my mental health. And I didn't like to admit this, but I would say five or six weekends where I just got really bummed out by something. Probably two or three of them started on Twitter. I thought, why am I on something that's making me on a regular basis upset? And uh there's an addictive nature to it. I think it must be just and that's what freaks me out. I can modulate it, you know, can my 13-year-old son and all that. Do I even know that he's upset when he goes, "We have a rule in my house. Our boys aren't allowed to go into their rooms with their phones alone." Cuz I think this thing can literally take a teenager, especially a teenager girl, down a rabbit hole and kind of zero to 60 really fast and then start serving her content. Oh, you're worried about dieting? Well, here's extreme dieting tips despite the fact we know you're 510 95 lbs. Oh, you're depressed. Well, here are some videos of people considering suicide. We're going to normalize it for you. And I don't think parents are really in touch with just how ugly and how fast it gets really ugly. So, you know, I'm trying to be very thoughtful about what it is as a, you know, stoicism, controlling what I can control and then trying to be in better touch with my emotions and recognize that when you're down, it's more about the chemistry in your head than any legitimate reason to be down. It's you're going to look at the end of life the biggest regrets. My colleague at NYU, Adam Alter, did great research on people who are very near death and palative care. And their biggest regrets are one, they'd wish they'd stayed in better touch with friends. They wish they'd lived the life they wanted to lead, not the life society or their parents wanted them to lead. But their biggest regret is they wish they'd been less hard on themselves. They wish they'd forgiven themselves. They wish they'd allowed themselves to be happy. And that's kind of been that's something I've been very focused on. It's like, okay, stop beating yourself up. You're going to be dead soon. Why wouldn't you squeeze as much juice out of this lemon as as as conceivable and like afford yourself the opportunity to be happy and be sad if you need to be. But I think of stoicism is again life isn't about what happens to you. It's how you respond to what happens to you and decide what is in your control and you know try and try and be good to yourself. Try and forgive yourself and also just try and be humble. You are never more prone to a really big mistake than right after a big win. Because here's the thing, you start thinking you're good at picking stocks. You start thinking you're so skilled at work, it wasn't that someone senior to you took an interest in you and championed you. You start thinking, "Oh, I'm great at real estate. I just didn't got get lucky and buy a home at the right time." So, be try and just try and ignore the market when the market tells you you're a failure. And this is personal, too. You know, there's been moments in my life where I thought, I don't think I'm ever going to be able to work again. I think I've ruined everything. I don't think I'm ever going to make a very, very good living. I remember thinking, saying to my partner at the time, let's move to a low-cost neighborhood, a Charlottesville, or Raleigh Durham. I'm going to teach, try and write, you know, make decent livingings, and just have a really nice life. And my partner's like, "That's giving up." And I'm like, "Well, it's not giving up, but I thought, this is it. I just need to substantially downgrade my expectations. And I'm I don't mean to say that that's not a great life. I remember thinking after my divorce like I don't think I'm ever going to have someone who I can share my life with again. I'm like this just is never going to happen to me. I'm an unattractive broken man who's never going to find like a partner again. I I believe that for a short time. And I think that it's important that everybody recognize that, you know, you are the answer to a firm's problem. You can find someone who you can love and is going to love you a great deal. The key is getting up, putting yourself in a place of success, getting out of the house, being friendly, being risk aggressive, surrounding yourself with people and exercise and nutrition that makes you feel good about yourself such that when the winds kick up again, your sales are up. And I've always tried to do that. Um, I've had a lot of failure, but I was always had my sales up such that when the winds kicked up again, I was in a position to to rumble, so to speak, cuz I have a lot I know a lot of people who are very successful, and then they hit some failure, a personal failure, a death of a parent, they can't quite get over, a divorce, a company that fails, and they get stuck. they can't forgive themselves, they can't forgive others, they can't forgive the market or they don't they lose their mojo, whatever it is and 2 3 5 years, 7 years goes on and they just haven't progressed and they start their skills start atrophing their confidence starts atrophing. So what I say is put a statute of limit whenever anything happen bad happens to you, you got to put a statute of limitations on it. a parent dies, you know, within 12 weeks, you should still be sad and thinking about your parents, but you should be able to you should be able to function. You know, you go through a real emotional trauma or breakup. Well, how serious was it? How much time? What's the statute of limitations? A business goes out of business. Okay, mourn for a little while. What is that? 2 months, 3 months? But if you aren't better, if you aren't back sending out emails, trying to raise money, going out trying to meet new people, whatever it might be within that timeline, you need to reach out for help and get unstuck because time goes really fast and your skills atrophy and it's sort of a downward spiral. And something I've always been able to do is mourn and move on. Churchill said, "The key to success is the ability to move through failure without losing your sense of enthusiasm." And I've tried. I've been pretty good at not losing my sense of enthusiasm.