The Confidence Conversation We Need to Have with Scott Galloway | A Bit of Optimism

1. SGScott Galloway0:00

   I had some [censored] up sense of masculinity when I was young where I never showed my emotions, didn't cry between the ages of 29 and 44, didn't laugh out loud. Now I purposely try to train myself into laughing out loud because 50% of having a good sense of humor is appreciating other people's cleverness.

2. SSSimon Sinek0:15

   I think learning to laugh, that's an expression of something you're feeling on the inside, I would argue is vulnerability.

3. SGScott Galloway0:21

   I think when you're a younger man, sometimes you have this belief that recognizing someone else is funny, acknowledging someone else's success somehow takes away from your success.

4. SSSimon Sinek0:34

   Yeah, yeah, yeah.

5. SGScott Galloway0:35

   That it's a zero-sum game, and what you realize as you get older is the guy who says to another guy, "Wow, you're so impressive," or laughs at his joke and says, "Wow, that was really funny," that's confidence.

6. SSSimon Sinek0:47

   Yes, you're describing confidence. It's 100%. That's all it is. Most of us have at least one friend who's got a total opposite personality to us. On paper, it shouldn't work, but for some reason it just does. That's me and Scott Galloway.

7. SGScott Galloway1:03

   Let's cause some trouble.

8. SSSimon Sinek1:05

   If you don't know Scott, he's a force of nature, a professor, entrepreneur, podcaster, bestselling author who's built a reputation as a provocative social commentator, unafraid of triggering his audience, or me, or anyone listening to this podcast.

9. SGScott Galloway1:21

   And I'll get [censored] for this.

10. SSSimon Sinek1:22

    Recently, the masculinity crisis has been one of Scott's main focuses, which inspired his new book, Notes on Being a Man. This also served as the starting point for our debate. I, I mean conversation. Yes, we have very different ideas about healthy masculinity, but we agree on one thing: confidence is the thing, and the question is, how do we help people build their confidence? Real men can listen, grow, disagree with respect, and still find common ground, just like me and my masculine friend, Scott. This is A Bit of Optimism. You were a business guy.

11. SGScott Galloway2:09

    Right.

12. SSSimon Sinek2:10

    Then, then you were a teacher.

13. SGScott Galloway2:13

    Right.

14. SSSimon Sinek2:13

    And now you've sort of taken on a larger-than-life presence as a podcaster, but n- also some social commentator. What's happening in your head? Are you growing up? Are you maturing? What philosophies have you completely abandoned? Is it age? Is it wisdom? Like, what's the thing that took you from there to here?

15. SGScott Galloway2:30

    It's a generous question. I, I think a couple things are driving me. Uh, one, I'm an atheist, and I think that really soon nobody we know or love is gonna remember us or be remembered, and so why wouldn't you try and live your life to the fullest and speak your mind and say things you're thinking but you're worried about being shamed, but you think that they're right? So I'm trying to live my life fearlessly. I always say that my goal is to live my life like I'm dancing with no one watching.

16. SSSimon Sinek3:00

    Yeah.

17. SGScott Galloway3:01

    I think it's important to reverse engineer your success to things that weren't your fault. Like, I'm not a humble person. We've talked about this. I think I'm a fucking monster. I think I'm in the top 1% of grit and hardworking and creative. But that puts you in a room the size of Germany. That puts you in a room of 75 million people. When I look back on the things that have resulted in a lifestyle my parents couldn't have dreamt of in terms of economics or influence or interesting friends and peers, it's, one, the irrational passion for my wellbeing and my mother. So I try to think about mentoring young men and finding programs that support and show young people value. Two, the University of California. I got Pell Grants. I got to go to UCLA when the admissions rate was 76%. This year it'll be 9%. I got to go to graduate school at Berkeley with a 2.27 GPA from UCLA for basically no money, so I'm very involved. I spent a lot of money, for me at least, on, uh, access or broadening access to state-supported education.

18. SSSimon Sinek4:03

    Yeah.

19. SGScott Galloway4:03

    People say, "What's the secret of your success?" For me, it's pretty straightforward, and that is I have been less afraid of public failure than most people. When you put out a podcast and you start a business, you're risking public failure.

20. SSSimon Sinek4:15

    Yeah.

21. SGScott Galloway4:15

    When you express, "I wanna be better friends with Simon Sinek," that's a certain amount of public failure and exposure.

22. SSSimon Sinek4:21

    Yeah.

23. SGScott Galloway4:21

    When you approach a strange woman and express romantic interest, you're setting yourself up for public failure. Most of my businesses have failed, but what I've been good at is, is risking public failure, and I wanna do more of that because if you think about the real obstacle between most people in a democratic society with the prosperity Americans enjoy and success or a better life, it's their fear of public failure.

24. SSSimon Sinek4:48

    Yeah.

25. SGScott Galloway4:48

    And what I've learned is the fear of public failure is a curb that is two inches high and really doesn't fucking matter. If you start a business and it doesn't work, people go, "Oh, it didn't work," and then they go back to thinking about themselves. If you approach a woman and express interest and she's not interested in you and you're respectful, you're both gonna be just fine.

26. SSSimon Sinek5:07

    Yeah.

27. SGScott Galloway5:07

    So I'm trying to be fearless, and I'm trying to also think about how I help or contribute to the things that gave me an irrational amount of success.

28. SSSimon Sinek5:18

    I have a friend, she's a, a female entrepreneur, who believes, and there's a caveat at the end, but she believes that men make better entrepreneurs than women. And she came to this belief because she said when we're young, traditional roles still apply where men have to be the social initiators for the most part. So, you know, the boy has to ask the girl to the prom. Those conventions still exist, and so men from an early age, boys from an early age, have to build up the courage to ask, get shot down, ask again, get shot down, ask, get shot down. And so when they grow up and they join the business world, they become more comfortable trying, get shot down, sales pitch, get shot down. And her, her attitude is that, that, that muscle, that grit, that fearlessness is, is cultivated young.And the caveat now is now in a world where everybody seems to have re- retracted from taking social risk, or too many people have, and you can sit in your room and swipe right.

29. SGScott Galloway6:18

    Yeah.

30. SSSimon Sinek6:18

    And you never feel rejected. You can just assume they didn't see your picture or whatever it is, that that muscle isn't building for anybody.

Episode duration: 54:53