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Anthony Scaramucci: Overcome Your Fear | E06 · In Search Of Excellence

• 7:09
  Randall Kaplan: podcast with family. And I do that, because we're nearly all of us are a product of our surroundings and our upbringing. And that starts with our parents. I think it's every parent's goal to be great role models for their kids. And part of that is trying to teach us at a young age to excel and be the best that we can be. So what were your parents like? And what kind of values did they instill in you?
• 8:28
  Anthony Scaramucci: Well, I don't want to sugarcoat things.
• 8:29
  Anthony Scaramucci: I'm gonna I want to talk as honestly as I can about the situation. I had a rough upbringing. You know, my, my brother has been in and out of rehab, three or four times, I think he's on his fourth rehab.
• 8:40
  Anthony Scaramucci: You know, my parents were not educated. It was a tough household to grow up in because there was constant economic stress and constant tension. But they loved us. And I think at the end of the day, as you get older, and this is a learning message to all the young people that listen to you, Randy, you parents are probably just trying to do their best you know, they are coming into life with their own environmental issues and their own natural issues. And so, you know, my parents, they came from two immigrant families. My grandparents got here from Italy impoverished.
• 9:22
  Anthony Scaramucci: One side, the Scaramucci is went to work in the coal mining town of Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania, Ma, the de Fayose. My mother's side, my grandfather, Augustine was an auto mechanic, and then he was a mason and then he had a small store, but they struggled.
• 10:31
  Anthony Scaramucci: And so this was a family. You know, that was, I would say a blue collar family as the only thing I would say that is different today is that my dad had a living wage. So he was a crane operator. He worked 42 years for the same company. But that was enough money. used to live in a small house, maybe it was 1300 square feet. Five people lived in that house, we had one full bath. We did not grow up poor. I would never tell anybody that my father was super hard worker, I would never, you know, be disrespectful to my dad's work ethic by suggesting to anybody that I grew up poor did not grow up poor, but we had a rough house, it was not not an easy place. And I think what happens to you as you're growing up, you start to idealize your future. And I can remember back in the mid 70s, when my father lost his overtime, that was a very, very big deal in my family because you get paid time and a half. If you work Sunday, you got double time. And so those weekend days or time after 3pm That was important time for my father, so I can remember my mother putting his lunch pail in the refrigerator 930 At night, my dad was in bed early. He got up at probably four o'clock in the morning. He was on the jobsite at five, six o'clock, he worked at 230. If he had overtime, he would come home at five if he didn't have overtime, he'd come home at 230. And so and then he had the opportunity to work on the weekend. So when they cut his hours back that created stress and anxiety in the family. So I was probably 11 or 12 years old. So Okay, I gotta go get a job. I went and got a paper out. And I started hustling papers in my town I put up baskets on my bicycle at 10 speed. I had one of those paper carrier pouches. And then I convinced the local manager of Long Island's Newsday to give me free papers on Wednesday. I used to go into the apartment buildings near my house. I used to hand out papers. And then I would ring the doorbells these women Randy they were all Jews, Italians and Irish, okay. And every single one of them knew my mother. I mean, my mother was like Siri, or Alexa before there was a Siri or like, if you wanted to know who was screwing who or who was having an affair in the town or what the hell was going on? My mother knew the answer. I had to just pick up the phone and call her. So all these old ladies mean they were probably young ladies at that time, 3540 years ago, but they were they were friends of my mom. And I said hey, how are you Mrs. Sheridan? Great. I just dropped off the paper. Did you enjoy Newsday? Oh, you did?
• 13:13
  Anthony Scaramucci: Great. Do you want to subscribe, and I guilted every one of those Jewish, Italian and Irish ladies into subscribing to the paper.
• 13:20
  Anthony Scaramucci: So I had like the largest paper out in the town. I was clearing about $45 a week, I gave put $15 in my pocket for my personal consumption. And I gave $30 to my parents. And you know, I've been in a negative subsidy my parents since that day. I mean, they you know, they there was just never, it was always on up.
• 13:42
  Anthony Scaramucci: And this is why I have such empathy for blue collar people because you're always on this treadmill. You're always working and you've always got this anxiety and there's a little savings. But that's what was motivating to me and I became an entrepreneur, born from those experiences. But you know, my parents loved me. They were they were good. They are good people.
• 14:04
  Anthony Scaramucci: My dad's 86 My, my mom's 84. But they were uneducated. And it was, it was a rough neighborhood. It was a rough house. And so, you know, I don't want to sugarcoat it. Because I think if you sugarcoat stuff, and you start to build this, hate geographies, very, very bad for your kids, I don't want my kids to see me without my flaws or to see or to revise history.
• 14:28
  Anthony Scaramucci: I'm not interested in revising history, I'd rather tell it the way it was. So that people can look at it and say, Okay, well, that's really raw. That's powerful. And it's authentic.
• 14:37
  Anthony Scaramucci: And, you know, there were a lot of fistfights there were a lot of fistfights in the neighborhood. There were, well, you didn't back down on my neighborhood, I can tell you that. I mean, we're gonna get into the Trump stuff later, but you weren't allowed to come back into the if you back down in a fight. It was like you couldn't do that you can't back down in a fight. So um, but that was my upbringing. And I will say this about my dad, which I always respected about him. He was very honest. may still is and I'll tell you this story. We were in Main Street. He got a parking ticket on the main street in the town. He took the ticket he walked up to the post office and got a money order to pay the ticket pops while you're doing that. I don't I don't want it over my head. I don't want the ticket over my head. You know the meter expire. Dad you could go home and write a check out of the checkbook and then mail it tomorrow. No, no, no, I gotta get it done right now. That was my father. And he was a big guy in the live below your means sort of thing. He was one of his lines that are always in my head. I tell my kids this although, you know, I spoiled the living. Are you allowed to curse on this or not? Yeah,
• 15:51
  Randall Kaplan: no. Okay, well, we're gonna be ourselves. So I mean,
• 15:57
  Anthony Scaramucci: I mean, I don't know, my kids, I basically, you know, I spoil the living shit out of them. Okay, I'm sorry, I said shit, but that's exactly what it is spoiled living shit out of them.
• 16:04
  Anthony Scaramucci: And so they're not thinking like that, that's fine. We've shifted the generation and we've made some money, but my father was always like, if you can't afford the price of the movies, or you can't afford the price of the ticket, don't go to the movies.
• 16:19
  Anthony Scaramucci: That was my pops. Okay, and so I have no debt, I pay all my taxes on time. I have no pay anxiety related to that part of money.
• 16:31
  Anthony Scaramucci: But the anxiety I have related to money is holy shit better make some more money because life is uncertain. We're going to have touch off huge inflation here momentarily. And better be You better be in the game literally making money.
• 16:49
  Randall Kaplan: So your dad set a really good example on the work ethic front when you had a paper out. Sounds like you worked very hard at that and very entrepreneurial of you to get the free papers and then and then sell them. What did you do for fun? Kids like to have fun?
• 17:02
  Randall Kaplan: Did you play sports?
• 17:06
  Anthony Scaramucci: Yeah, that was the heartbreak for Mr.
• 17:08
  Anthony Scaramucci: FASCO. May his soul rest in peace. You know, I was a pretty good baseball player as a kid.
• 17:11
  Anthony Scaramucci: And so I took on a lark I tried out for the junior varsity baseball team in my town. You could be in the eighth grade, and you were eligible for junior varsity baseball. And so I had that paper out. The fifth, sixth and seventh grade, the summer of the eighth grade. That would be like March of 1978. I tried out for the team and I made the team. Now. Young girls, Randy are way more important than papers. Okay, so I quit the paper out, so I could play baseball. And so I've always been a baseball enthusiast, a baseball buff. You know, I owned a piece of the New York Mets for a period of time I sold it to Steve Cohen, last year, lifelong math fan. So I've always been a sports enthusiast. Try to get to the gym regularly. But I had was a pretty decent athlete as a kid. My friends break my onions now because you know, I'm obviously a little short guy, but as a kid, I have to bring my yearbook. So embarrassing. I am as a person, Randy, I have to bring my high school yearbook in once in a while and show my gravitas and high school athletics but but, you know, so I was always into athletics. I'm a big reader. By read constantly. I like the outdoors.
• 18:33
  Anthony Scaramucci: I have a place where you know, we go skiing in the winter. You know, obviously, you know, I love watersports. I lived on Long Island, so it was impossible. Not to be involved with water. You know? So in the summer, I was a waterskiing enthusiast. Fish, clam. I don't know, you grew up in Chicago, where you grew up in Detroit, Detroit. Okay, so you grew up in the Midwest. So, you know, you probably were around the lakes.
• 19:03
  Anthony Scaramucci: So I mean, you know, I I enjoyed all of that in the summer. I was always an entrepreneur, though.
• 19:11
  Anthony Scaramucci: So I got the baseball thing figured out. So then I went to the local shopping store, you know, like the key food. I don't know what they called it in your area, maybe was an Acme or a Stop and Shop or something like that out where you are now it's Ralph's? You know, I went to the supermarket. And I cut a deal with the manager where I told them Look, I can't tell you when I'm going to start but I'll punch the clock, I promise. You know what the timestamp. So because I was playing baseball, and so if we had a road game, I make it I make it there at seven o'clock if I didn't have a road game and they get there at six o'clock. And so I cut a deal with the manager, where after school sports, I would go stock shelves in the local supermarket mopped the floors. You know sometimes it gave me freezer duty. I hated that because you were like freezing your ass off while you're trying to put put everything together. But to this day, you will see me take the shopping cart and roll it back up to the front of the store and put it into the other shopping carts to this day because of that job. And you know he's another guy that passed away.
• 20:20
  Anthony Scaramucci: This guy was an amazing guy.
• 20:24
  Anthony Scaramucci: He's amazing entrepreneur, Italian American. I remember he loved me. I mean knock on wood.
• 20:29
  Anthony Scaramucci: He this is I mean if you have time for his 32nd story, I'm sure I'm in the place. I can tell you the exact day. It was a weekend or it was it was a school was out. It was June 30 1980. I can tell you the exact day I can tell you the weather okay, it was blazing hot summer day. This idiot backed up the Coca Cola truck into the loading bay. And we had glass bottles back in the day all the glass bottles came out of the truck landed in the loading area exploded everywhere. My boss is on the up these Scaramucci come to the back, you know, instead of Clean up on aisle seven, you got to go out and mop up and like sweep up the loading is broken glass everywhere. The guy was drunk, actually, you know, I mean, you could smell the alcohol on the driver. So I had my little apron on my little, you know, pants. And I went out there, and I got stung by every yellow jacket on Long Island, okay, they were crawling up my pants. They were attacking me in the back. And I came in I was swollen with bee stings. And I was like, oh my god, I gotta get I gotta go to college. There is no way I'm doing this for a living. I just looked at him. I said, I don't know where I'm going to college. But I'm going to college. I'm not doing this for a living. And that was a big moment for me. I know that sounds crazy. But it was like, my family was a family of workers. You know, they're working class people. So, you know, my parents wanted me to go to college, but they didn't know the difference between these colleges. You know, when I got into tufts, my father thought it was spelled T ough. S he had no clue. No clue. Okay. And then, you know, it's probably sounds nuts. But when I got into Harvard, my parents had the map out. They had like one of those old Rand McNally maps. And my mother had like the yellow highlighter, taking us to Hartford. Mom, why do you have us going to Horford? You're not going to Hartford law school. I know mom not going to Harvard Law School. What Why would they call it Hartford law school was not in Hartford, because it's not called Hartford law school.
• 22:44
  Anthony Scaramucci: It's Harvard Law School. And that was my life. Okay, so my parents had no clue. They just wanted me to get educated and they, you know, and that's how it happened. You know, I you know, here's the thing. So I love about you. Okay. I'm telling you the raw raw naked on varnished. This is how it went down. Okay, I had the gold chains. I had the 1979 Berlinetta Camaro that I bought from the Sunoco station, which my parents didn't want me to buy, but I had saved up the money quietly to buy it. And I got I got an Alpine power booster in there. I don't know if you guys did that in Detroit.
• 23:26
  Anthony Scaramucci: But you know, I'm probably half deaf because of that. And I had all my little cassette tapes.
• 23:33
  Anthony Scaramucci: And I used to drive the girls down to Jones Beach. I've just put seven or eight people in that car. And of course, because my uncle had a motorcycle shop in the town. And I didn't mention that, but I worked there too. So I worked there on the weekends. So I had I learned how to drive when I was 14 I got my first car accident when I was 15. And I can remember having like too many people in the courthouse would stop me.
• 23:57
  Anthony Scaramucci: Sometimes they would let me go other times. I had people outside the car hitchhiking down to Jones Beach, you know. I mean, that was that was it man.
• 24:05
  Randall Kaplan: We have a lot of similarities in our background.
• 24:07
  Randall Kaplan: We're gonna get into this a little bit later, but I bagged groceries in high school to make some money to pay for long distance phone bills to my girlfriend who was a year ahead of me at Michigan and I also had a Chevy Camaro, the four cylinder with hubcaps that were in hubcaps that look like actually metal plates. But we're gonna we're gonna get into some similarities.
• 24:31
  Anthony Scaramucci: Yeah, but you strike me as that kind of a guy. I'm not I'm not surprised by any of that. But the, you know, the guy. His name was Lou Campanelli. I mean, he was such a guy. And I gotta say this, do you remember this stuff? Because like, I want to be a boss like Lou Campanelli. So like, when I'm in a situation in my office, even though he was the local key food owner, I'm like, what would you do in this situation? He was such a you main good guy, Randy, you know.
• 24:59
  Randall Kaplan: So at some point, at some point in your life, you made a conscious effort to be the best at whatever you did. It sounds like you're doing that way back with a paper route. We're gonna move into the education and there's no better investment in our future than a good education.
• 25:17
  Randall Kaplan: But when When did you really make a conscious effort to be great at something was it in school? So you get into tufts it was at a tough so you can get into Harvard.
• 25:26
  Anthony Scaramucci: No, no, no, no, I was a disaster in school in high school. I got into tufts because there'll be pitch to me for saying this, but I'll tell you, my father was weighing trucks when he got older. So he started as labor and he was a crane operator and then we got into his 50s they let them weigh trucks. So you put the crushed aggregate on the truck and then you weigh the truck and then you you get charged by per square ton of the The aggregate and there was a guy that name ability to Moscow, and May his soul rest in peace. And I think he was either on the board of trustees at Tufts, it was a huge donor. He was an alumnus of Tufts University. And he said to my pops, I'm going to catch up three kids, two boys and a girl.
• 26:12
  Anthony Scaramucci: Okay, great. Are they going to go to college? Oh, yeah. And I would want my kids to go to college. Okay, great. Where are they going to go to college?
• 26:17
  Anthony Scaramucci: Well, there was a college down the block from us called CW post college. It's like Long Island University. And my thought was, well, they gotta go to CW post.
• 26:25
  Anthony Scaramucci: It's right down the block. And the guy says, no, no, no. You can't go to CW post it. I want to send your kids to Tufts. So my father comes home. My older brother, he looks at us, he says, Forget about CW post.
• 26:36
  Anthony Scaramucci: You're going to Tufts it spelled T ough. S. Go look it up in that stupid phonebook of the colleges. Okay. So my brother gets the book out. He's opening up the book. It's like that.
• 26:47
  Anthony Scaramucci: It's not spelled to you. It's it's t u fts. And its most selective. We're not going to Tufts that we don't have the grades for it. And oh, no, no, this guy, Billy tomorrow. So he's going to help you out.
• 27:00
  Anthony Scaramucci: You're gonna go to Tufts. So my brother went to Tufts, he's a couple years older than me. And then my father was like Henry Ford. In this respect. He was like, and you can go to any school you want as long as it's tufts. So I ended up getting in a tough, so I went to Tufts. So this is the moment I was a disaster in high school. Okay, I had a very high LSAT score. But I had, like, you know, still God's grades. You know, they were like, mediocre grades. And I was chasing the girls. And I was striving to come out. That's what I was interested in. And I was working, right. So the moment in my life that changed me, was April of 1982. My pops handed me a $10,000 Check. It was made out to me. Dad, what is this? I said, Well, you know, I cashed in the cash value of my union life insurance. So he was putting money away every month and his life insurance policy, and it was building some cash value. And so he terminated it, and he got the check. And he handed it to me. And he said, I don't really have any money to send you to school. You know, your brother. I gave him a little bit of money. He was on his own. I'm giving you a little bit of money. I don't really have any money. So I cashed that in my life insurance. I said, Pop, should you cash that to your life insurance? I said what you know, mean, you put you know, that's fine. It's fine.
• 28:22
  Anthony Scaramucci: You need the money. But that's really all I have. And it was April 1982. And, Randy, I don't know what that I don't know what it was because I was a young jerk off of a kid. Like an anvil hit me in the head, like the wily coyote and I was like, Okay, I cannot disappoint my parents. He just gave me his life insurance canceled. And I got this $10,000 Check. I paid the first tuition was $24,000 plus the room and board. Okay, so I had money saved. I paid it.
• 28:52
  Anthony Scaramucci: I don't know if you want to hear about spring break. But I could bring that up too. If you're and then i i went to Tufts. And then I was hustling up there. I was delivering pizzas. I was delivering newspapers. I had T shirts made I was probably in violation of the NASCAR if logos. But I made I made these T shirts, I was handing exactly
• 29:15
  Randall Kaplan: what I did exactly what we had
• 29:18
  Anthony Scaramucci: added to T shirts, we were printing them.
• 29:20
  Anthony Scaramucci: And then I was selling them. And I had Fruit of the Loom. And I had hanes and you know, and I was calling people to see if I can get a better deal. Do you know what I'm saying? And, and then and then to and to make a long story short, but I'm probably making it too long. I always had money though. Because of that. I was always hustling to make sure that I was just ahead. And of course, I was borrowing at a borrow because I there was no way I could afford it all. But here's the one thing I will say about Harvard, they gave you the money when you got into Harvard, they were like, okay, and by the way, you remember this, the interest rates were like nine 10% Back in the day. They were like, Okay, we're gonna give you the my how much you need. on my wall? How much can I get, like wall wall, tell us what you need. And I filled out all the paperwork.
• 30:05
  Anthony Scaramucci: And they gave me I don't know, 60 or $70,000 for the three years at like a 3% interest rate. And so I love I mean, so I always give the Harvard by the way, i my i know people why have you given the Harvard I'm giving a Harvard because they got me started, you know, I mean, and they and they put me in a position and I have an endowed like scholarship at Tufts for kids that have no money, where if they get in and the criteria of income is set up a certain way they get they get some money from me to help them out with their tuition.
• 30:37
  Randall Kaplan: We have another similarity there. I endowed scholarship and Michigan for a full ride for someone in state merit base for a student that has a interest in business. So I think it's great that you're giving back But at some point, Anthony, you must have killed it at Tufts because you got into Harvard and that's where you and I was, you know, we different therapies.
• 31:01
  Anthony Scaramucci: That was different and you so I don't know why you weren't that good in school you strike me somebody that was very good in school?
• 31:05
  Anthony Scaramucci: No, no,
• 31:07
  Randall Kaplan: I was a Phi Beta Kappa my junior year I graduated top 1% of my class, but I did not get accepted to Harvard Law School. I went to Northwestern law school, I don't test well, my friends. I went to Harvard and I went to Northwestern, which I love by the way, it's a fantastic school and I'm very involved.
• 31:25
  Anthony Scaramucci: At that level, the schools are these schools are fantastic. And I I always tested well, for whatever reason, you know, everyone's got different skills. I always tested well, you know, and I did well on the LSAT had high grades at Tufts, like you I was like summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa.
• 31:45
  Anthony Scaramucci: I applied to seven schools, I got rejected from Yale. And I got into the other six schools, I went to Harvard. And I remember the day it was February 6 1986, it was Ronald Reagan's 75th birthday. I drove my Camaro down to Harvard from Tufts. It's only like three miles away. And I went there with a $250 check from Bae banks to lock in my position. And then you probably don't want to hear this. But what was my next move? I turned to the lady behind. So how are you? Great. I said the law firms recruit here, right? Yes, they do. Do you have a recruiting book? And she said, Yes, I do. I so could I see it. She handed me this phone book of all these major law firms. Right. And so then I took the Harvard alumni directory, and I cross reference, and by this how naive I was. I wanted to be a Wall Street lawyer, Randy. So I said that Wall Street lawyers, they must be on Wall Street. So I opened up the book, looked at the addresses. There was a law firm called us Hubbard and Reed.
• 32:49
  Anthony Scaramucci: They were located at one Wall Street. And so I looked up the partners of us Hubbard and read that we're in the Harvard Law alumni directory. I wrote them all down. I typed up my resume on a Panasonic typewriter. And I went to New York. And I cold call these people. This is before 911. Right? So you literally I went to the one Wall Street rode the elevator to the 28th floor. The elevator opened up. There I am standing there in my like polyester suit. How are you? I'm here to see like Worthington. Babs calm the 32nd or some shit like that. And she's like, Well, is he expecting you? I said, I don't know. I mean, well, I think he is I said, you know, the, the, you know, of course, I told the fanbase at the Harvard placement. People told me to come see him. And so the guy comes out with the fucking suspenders on. And he says, Come on in here. I said, Yeah. I said, well, listen, sir. I said, I just I'm at Tufts. I'm about to graduate. I got accepted to Harvard, I have no money. And but I'm willing to work hard.
• 33:49
  Anthony Scaramucci: Here's my transcript and come in every day. I'll work throughout the night. I don't care. But I need some experience. I also need some money. I gotta pay for this thing. So he looks at me.
• 34:00
  Anthony Scaramucci: And he says, I'll start you at$8 an hour. So Randy, you know what? I said? Could you make a 10? You have some brass balls as a kid, you got some brass balls.
• 34:10
  Anthony Scaramucci: I said, Well, you know, I need the money. It's you know, I'm going to make a tent. So that summer, they killed me. I worked on the people's Express merger with Continental Airlines summer of 1986. And they were paying me$10 an hour. And I got overtime there and they gave me some money. And I was able that really helped me to get through school.
• 34:36
  Randall Kaplan: Let's talk about after Harvard. You took the bar exam. Tell us about that.
• 34:44
  Anthony Scaramucci: Oh, I was like my immaturity, my naivete, my imbecile period. Harvard is very good for you in some ways, and very bad for you and others.
• 34:52
  Anthony Scaramucci: And so it's very good for you to get a great education meet some really smart people, you build an AI network. It's bad for you, because you can start believing your own BS and your own garbage. So they told me that you needed a 66% to pass the New York state bar. And I just got done telling you that I'm a good test taker. So I'm like, Okay, no problem. My buddies were studying. I was working and I was out waterskiing and I used to get my girlfriend and get the skis. You know, my father had this little 20 foot fishing boat. So Boston Whaler we had an Evan rude engine on the back of it. I used to go waterskiing crack open a beer eat deli sandwiches. What are you taking the bar in July? Yeah, yeah, it's fine. What about skiing working at night, you know, working for my uncle's motorcycle shop. About six days before the bar exam. I cracked open the books to look at the test. And I got a little panicked I was like, Okay, do I This is like a lot more than I thought. And then it dawned on me, the test was designed to ensure that you put the six weeks of time in Okay, and I didn't have it. So, arrogant stupidity, overconfidence, I mean, whatever you want to call it. And so the piece de resistance is I failed the test by one multiple choice question.
• 36:14
  Anthony Scaramucci: Okay, so I got to 65.6 on the test. And New York State does not round up, you have to get to the 66 number. So I failed by one multiple choice question was horrifyingly embarrassing.
• 36:29
  Anthony Scaramucci: didn't help me, in terms of the first impression that I made at Goldman Sachs did not help me.
• 36:37
  Anthony Scaramucci: And then, because I'm, you know, I don't know, this is probably more stupidity. But this is I'm telling you this so that people, young people could pay attention. I had to take the series seven to go to Goldman Sachs, which is the broker dealer license to sell securities. I had all these yuppies in my class right there.
• 36:56
  Anthony Scaramucci: Harvard, Michigan, you know, this, that and the other thing.
• 36:59
  Anthony Scaramucci: And so they had this tradition at Goldman, where you paid you played series seven chicken? Do you know what that is?
• 37:09
  Randall Kaplan: I could guess what it is, but you can tell us what it is.
• 37:13
  Anthony Scaramucci: You get the whoever gets the pass the thing you get to 72. Whoever gets closest to 72 and passes wins the pot. There were 40 kids in the class $200 apiece, it was an 8000. All pot. Okay, well, who do you think won the pot? What do you think? One department?
• 37:31
  Anthony Scaramucci: Okay, I was erasing answers with my number two question. Okay, I had, I had it worked out that I was going to get a 74 I gave myself a two point margin of error. And I got myself down to a 74. And I want But now here's how stupid I am. The lowest score of that Goldman class was 91. All I needed was an 89.
• 37:56
  Anthony Scaramucci: Right? But so in other words, everyone else did not play series seven chicken, I was the only one playing it. They were just doing it for the peer pressure. They threw the $200 into the pot. So now, I look like I'm the dumbest person that Goldman has ever hired. I failed the bar exam. And I got a 73.
• 38:15
  Anthony Scaramucci: But I did get the $8,000. I got the 8000. And I got a 73 and 77 on the test. And then I got fired from Goldman about 18 months after I got hired. So that was another. I mean, that was like a huge disaster. I mean, I tell people, you think me getting fired from the White House was bad. Hi, by getting fired from Goldman, after 18 months, I had no money loaded up with school debt. I mean, that was even worse. Man. That was a lot worse.
• 38:44
  Randall Kaplan: Let's back up for a bit. I mean, Goldman Sachs is the the investment banking group, as you know, is the most prestigious, most difficult job to get coming out of grad school, you're you're coming out of law school, the other people I've worked, probably gone to have a BBA, they probably know how to model you're getting there. And they expect you to model create these super complicated 200 Page models with a lot of inputs and variables.
• 39:14
  Randall Kaplan: And here you go, go put these two companies together and tell us if it makes sense. Tell us where the profits are where you can cut costs. And, and it's it's intimidating, right? I sent a letter to Goldman Sachs, right at law school, didn't even hear back from him. You know, there was no shot and it's, uh, put some numbers on this. Goldman Sachs gets 250,000 applications a year from college graduates.
• 39:43
  Randall Kaplan: And the acceptance rate in the investment banker was less than 3%. So let's let's talk about because we really want to focus on how people are going to achieve their best. I mean, the odds coming out of law school, you working at Goldman Sachs?
• 39:58
  Randall Kaplan: How did that come about? And Did that scare you that you weren't even going to get there?
• 40:03
  Anthony Scaramucci: Yeah, yeah.
• 40:03
  Anthony Scaramucci: But I mean, you know, again, you know, some of like, your pig headedness and your naivete is that you just you go on missile lock on something. And so I wanted a job in investment banking. I knew I read everything that I could about Goldman, and then I realized that my ticket in was to identify somebody at Harvard, that was teaching a course. That was from Goldman. And so I found that person in 1987, a gentleman by the name of David Dorst, who was running their international sales and trading area.
• 40:40
  Randall Kaplan: I love David. I love David. So the nicest guys on Wall Street. He's incredible.
• 40:45
  Anthony Scaramucci: Yeah, so he's, he's a he's a real human being. Terrific guy. We said he's been into almost every salt conference that I've done. He was with me in Abu Dhabi. The last one, unfortunately, before we had to postpone these events due to the pandemic. But David, I mean, you know, he was an unbelievable guy. And I took his course in international markets, I did very well. He invited me down to be interviewed. They interviewed me in 87 for a summer job. And they told me no, go on the summer job, you don't have enough experience. And then I said, Okay, well, what would I need to do to get more experience and then they told me, and then I went and checked those boxes, and then I went back. And then they said, okay, but then you need to do A, B, and C. And then I said, okay, then I did a, b, and c. And in December of 1988, they gave me that job offer that very coveted job offer. And but here's another learning lesson for the young people that listen to you, Randy. I had a high level of insecurity at the time, I was out of my element because I grown up in a blue collar family. David can confirm this.
• 42:00
  Anthony Scaramucci: Have you ever run into him? He was like, Okay, listen, man.
• 42:04
  Anthony Scaramucci: You're a smart kid. But you're like literally the worst dressed person that we've ever met at the Harvard Law School. I mean, you can't wear polyester. I mean, at 100% polyester suit at 100% polyester shirt, a black widow, Thai, cockroach killing, you know, Capezio dance shoes.
• 42:23
  Anthony Scaramucci: My hair was blown back like Tony Minero, from Saturday Night Live Saturday fever. And Doris was like, you're very, very smart.
• 42:32
  Anthony Scaramucci: But I can't bring you down a Goldman Sachs dress like You're like fully flammable. At any point, you're gonna explode. You gotta go to Brooks Brothers, or there was a place called J press. You got to go over there and buy yourself some clothes. I remember being so embarrassed.
• 42:43
  Anthony Scaramucci: And I had no money, right. So I went got a credit card, I got the clothes. And the clothes actually fit pretty nicely. It's always look better and natural fibers, by the way, just so your listeners know that. And I went down to Goldman, I got the interview. But, but it was a work in progress. It took about two years. I started the Odyssey to get the job at Goldman in 1987. And to quote doors, I must have met 60 People at Goldman.
• 43:12
  Anthony Scaramucci: Before the before they offered me the job. And one of the guys said, This guy wants his job so badly. We'll give him the job, you know, and I got the job. But I sucked at the job. So this is the learning lesson for everybody. I was going for the cool job you just mentioned that was a prestigious place back in the day, and it was Goldman Sachs, I was going for the cool job. I wasn't going for the job that was right for me, I was going for the job that was going to impress my friends coming out of Harvard Law School. That's a mistake, you got to go for the job that you're going to be good at and the job that you're going to love. So you don't feel like you're working. So when I got there, I had no clue. And I didn't know what the hell was going on. And I had to get up to speed quickly. And I had already formed a very bad impression by failing the bar exam and getting a 73 on the series seven. And so when the recession came, they fired me. Now that the best part of this story, if you got two more seconds, the woman calls me. I'm fired February 1 1991.
• 44:10
  Anthony Scaramucci: And my boss says we're gonna give you 11,000 All severance check. I said, Okay, thank you.
• 44:21
  Anthony Scaramucci: Another learning lesson for kids. Don't be mad at the people that fire you do not do that.
• 44:24
  Anthony Scaramucci: Always be nice to those people.
• 44:26
  Anthony Scaramucci: They're having a hard day too.
• 44:26
  Anthony Scaramucci: And they may they may come up with a way to help you later on General Kelly and I are like best friends now. You saw General Kelly at my conference last year, and we've done seven speaking games. He fired my ass from the White House. So I mean, just relax. Gotta be nice, everybody. So I'm being very nice. The guy that fires me. I got the money, the $11,000 and now looking for a job. So I got a roll of quarters. Randy.
• 44:51
  Anthony Scaramucci: There's no cell phones. And I'm pumping quarters at the grand central train station. I'm calling people. I've got my resume. I got my suit on natural fiber suit, and I'm going to get a job. And my buddy calls me that night leaves of answering machine message. I think I have the perfect job for you call me back. I call him up he says there's a job in the sales and trading area. And this is where David doors used to work. And it's there's an opening the air and I think you're very good at that stuff. You've been selling your whole life. I'm going to try to help you get the job. I said okay, great. And then I called the guy that fired me to partner to fire me. I said, Hey, I know you fired me but I got a good attitude. I came to work.
• 45:35
  Anthony Scaramucci: Yes, you're a great guy. You just don't have the room for you. I said what about the job upstairs? And this guy Mike facet tele who I'm still very close to walk upstairs for me.
• 45:44
  Anthony Scaramucci: He told the hiring partner in that division that I had the right attitude and the Right make up and they should give me a shout up there. We've already you know, he's already been trained here at Goldman. So I got rehired. So I got fired on February 1, I got rehired on March 28. Now the personnel people call me they're like, Hey, how are you? I said, Great.
• 46:05
  Anthony Scaramucci: I said, Yeah, you know, I've really good news here. You're never gonna have to tell anybody you got fired. We're just gonna mark it down as an interdepartmental transfer. Oh, yeah, that's great. Can we get the $11,000 back, please? I said, no, I forgot to spend the money. I said, you can't get the$11,000 back. I already used it to pay off debt. And you can't get it. Like, oh, I'm what am I going to say to the partner? I said, Well, Jose, that partner fired me. He put the expenses on his budget to give me $11,000.
• 46:36
  Anthony Scaramucci: Just tell him I spent it. I don't have the money. So I'm probably the only person in Goldman's history that's been hired and fired, and then rehired and kept the severance check.
• 46:48
  Randall Kaplan: You know, the world's a very round world. I came to Los Angeles as well.
• 46:50
  Randall Kaplan: Another similarity. I had gone to law school, I moved out to Los Angeles had $3,000. In the bank, there were layoffs, I got laid off before I even found out that I passed the bar. And I was looking at waiting tables. And when I got laid off, I get called into the conference room.
• 47:12
  Randall Kaplan: Been there five and a half weeks, I said, you see a later a lot of people really make a mistake, they get fired and they insult they swear, stomp out.
• 47:19
  Randall Kaplan: People say fuck you. But it's a really round world. And then a few years later, I was looking for my third job. I took another job one hour away from Los Angeles, I was working until midnight every night wanting to work downtown Los Angeles. For this firm. I was working in Costa Mesa. They said you got to move so I'm not looking for my third job out first year. And the firm I wanted was a Melanie and Myers one of the best firms in Los Angeles very fast, and they didn't hire me. And I was crushed. And interestingly, the guy who took me on my callback at the fanciest restaurant in Los Angeles at the time that patina treated me like an asshole arrogant asshole, you know, had no interest in me whatsoever. So I get hired a year later at Sun America, I'm the assistant to the chairman of Malvani is our main counsel. And I'm in this room one day at lunch at their firm with a free lunch and my boss is there. And up comes the sky. Hey, man, what are you doing here looking at me confused? And I said, Oh, I work at Sun American, what do you do?
• 48:30
  Randall Kaplan: I'm the assistant to the chairman and his eyes just went wide. And I walked away. And now I'm in a position in some way to influence illegal work and the firm that didn't want me but I think the lesson there both times is be nice to people on your way out. Because it's a very round world. You've had some ups and downs. I've had a lot of them myself, but they rehired you. And now you're in the wealth management group at some point. Yeah, what was the group? Was was a group? How would you know what what was the transition to that group?
• 49:10
  Anthony Scaramucci: Well, perfect for me, perfect for me, because remember, I told you about the apartment building and the free papers. So So what did they do? They trained me for a little while additional training, and said, Okay, you're gonna get a desk, a telephone and a business card. And here's our list of products and services for wealthy individuals. And you're going to call people from here. And you're going to say, Hey, how are you? I would like you to invest in this stuff. And perfect for me, because that's what I was doing since I was 11 years old. And so I actually liked it right. So I got a phone bump, cold calling, whatever you want to call it. And, but I was having a little hard time in the beginning because I didn't have a network. So the first check I wrote was to Rudy Giuliani for politics. And the reason I wrote that check was like $250. He was running for office, running again for mayor. And I needed to use the world of politics in my mind to create a network for myself, because it was an easy entree. Randy. I had never been inside a country club. I had never hit a golf ball. I never swung a tennis racket. So how was going to meet people? It's okay. I can meet people through the world of politics. So. So the great irony is, I got too close to the fire and politics obviously with hindsight, but the politics was always a fun project for me, but it was always related to my business.
• 50:46
  Anthony Scaramucci: It wasn't to be a politician.
• 50:50
  Anthony Scaramucci: And it wasn't to go into Powell.
• 50:50
  Anthony Scaramucci: ethics, I'm 57 years old, if I wanted to be a politician, you start that process way younger, you start that in your, you know, you know, 40s or 30s, or, or whatever I, I've always wanted to be an entrepreneur, I never wanted to be a politician.
• 51:04
  Anthony Scaramucci: But I use the politics as an entree, and that works. Rudy was very helpful to me, you know, look Rudy's Michigan, or now or wherever you want to say it, you know, we would say an Italian tooth departs. He's got a chicken running around in his head. But But back then, I mean, he was really trying to save the city. And he was like, you know, he was fun to work with. And he was very helpful to me. You know, there's a funny story in that. He introduced me to George Pataki. I'm raising money for Pataki, Pataki. He's running for office, and I'm working for Pataki, and then all of a sudden, Rudy says, I'm no longer endorsing Pataki. I'm going to endorse Mario Cuomo. That's Rudy. So George and I are Governor Pataki and I are like, what would he? What's he doing now? Now he's now with Governor Cuomo. And by the way, Pataki won that race. We raised them a ton of money for that race. But the point I'm making is that the politics for me was a entry. The politics for me was a networking thing. Okay, I am and you'll find I did fundraisers for Chuck Schumer. I did fundraisers for Hillary Clinton, I did fun. You know, if you were a New York politician, I did a fundraiser for you. I had fun doing it. I liked it, you know? And, and it wasn't until I got involved with Trump that it crossed over into the disaster that it was, but I mean, that's life. I mean, what are you gonna do?
• 52:36
  Randall Kaplan: I want to talk for a minute about the transition from investment banking, where I've read that you said, you should have never gone into that it wasn't right for you. And now you're a wealth manager. And, and you you say to people, don't get sucked into the hype of certain things. And you think that people should focus on the things that are fun, and they're comfortable, when you're comfortable in your own skin? So, so the question I have for you, and I'm picking up one of a couple of things, I'm thinking about a really good friend of mine, who runs a $10 billion hedge fund. I know, you know, him, he's well respected.
• 53:09
  Randall Kaplan: The firm has phenomenal performance, making a shit ton of money, and he's fucking miserable. He hates his partners does like going into work every day. And, you know, if you don't know him, you wouldn't even know that. And he's not the only one.
• 53:21
  Randall Kaplan: I mean, you know, people like this, a lot of your friends are miserable. They're lawyers, they want to do something else high paying jobs, they can't leave.
• 53:29
  Randall Kaplan: But what do you what do you tell people? I mean, do you think it's really if you're not doing something that you really love, you should go do something else?
• 53:38
  Randall Kaplan: Is that realistic? When you think about it?
• 53:41
  Anthony Scaramucci: I don't, I don't know the people circumstances, what I would say is never take carte blanche or blanket advice from anybody. And if you're trying to mentor somebody, you don't start out with, Hey, I did this, right. So you should go do that. Or I did this wrong. So you should never do that. That's not a good way to mentor somebody to wait a mentor somebody to get to know them get to know what they like, get to know their interests. And then you also have to understand what their obligations are, you know, and so, you know, case study, there's a lawyer, he's our age, he's making lots of money, but he's got kids in boarding school, and he's got his parents he's got to take care of he's got this or maybe as a ex wife. And obviously, he's got these golden handcuffs around him. Is it the right thing to just pick up and leave?
• 54:29
  Anthony Scaramucci: Maybe not, you know, or there's a guy who that has a idea, business idea, and it's a burning in his soul. You know, Obama, by the way, I would recommend this to you, President Obama, his book I thought was great. And by the way, you could tell he wrote the book. And he talked about running for president and the decision making to run for president and he almost did not run for president's wife didn't want them to do it. He was concerned about doing it. But he had this like burning thing in his head that he was going to be the first black president. So you're saying if I don't do this, I'm never gonna be able to live with myself. So that guy, if you're with him at that moment, you say, Barack or President Obama or senator, whatever want to call him want to be respectful.
• 55:14
  Anthony Scaramucci: I'm talking about him before he ascends to the presidency. Go do it. Because you know, you got to you got one life, you know, like, Bill Gates. You got to really go back every once in a while. I watched his commencement address at Stanford. I don't remember the year maybe was oh, four.
• 55:30
  Anthony Scaramucci: Possibly oh, five. I'm gonna guess oh, five. And he writes a beautiful speech. He gives it even better than he wrote it and he's like, Hey, you're gonna be dead, man. You're gonna be dead.
• 55:40
  Anthony Scaramucci: Okay, Mel Brooks, relax. None of us are getting out of here a life. So what do you want to do it yourself to me? I've been really benefited but my dad if you can't afford ticket, don't go to the movies. So, Randy, I don't compete with anybody. If you have a bigger house to meet, Mazel Tov, if you've got 25 cars and I have one car, Mazel Tov, if you have 26 vacation homes and I don't, Mazel Tov, I don't compete with anybody. So I'm always living below my means. So if the volatility of being in business is like this, it's not hitting me at home. Does that make any sense? To put it in? I don't know the personalities that you're talking to. But if you got guys that are stretched thin, and they're on that Habitrail, maybe they can't get off the Habitrail.
• 56:29
  Randall Kaplan: This is more a question about doing things that you love, and getting stuck into a career that you really don't love. And they would rather be doing something else. I mean, should we all pursue it? But I understand
• 56:42
  Anthony Scaramucci: I understand the question, but I'm saying some of it is conditioned upon what their obligations are, let's say I have it the worst job ever. But I'm making really good money. And I've got all these people that I'm responsible for. You know, I probably don't leave that job.
• 56:57
  Anthony Scaramucci: You know, that's my point. You know, if if your it depends on what your obligations are, you know, I tried to set my life up.
• 57:05
  Anthony Scaramucci: My first house was ridiculously small. I remember my buddies at Goldman, like, what do you live in in this area for a while I'm going to be leaving Goldman. As soon as my school debt is paid off. We're going to start my own business. I did that. And then I moved into a nice house. I gave that to my first wife. And I said, that's fine. Then I had to go build another house. It's fine. My point is that I don't know what these people are doing with their lives philosophically, if you're asking me a broad philosophical question, you should do what you love. Wake up, you should do what you love. Because if you don't do that, you're going to regret that for sure. This thing's moving man. You're my contemporary. This thing is moving. We knew each other 20 years ago. Now, the only thing that separating my hair from your hair is hair dyed this is Latin American dictator Brown.
• 57:49
  Anthony Scaramucci: Okay, see, that looks great on TV. You know, you'll look like Sean Hannity on TV. But with that hair, I mean, you should go to the colors. You gotta get a good color or she can't get one that overly perfects In other words, doesn't look right. And you can't do it like Rudy, you know, you can't do shake it in the bottle, and having the dripping off the side of your head. You gotta go to a pro.
• 58:08
  Anthony Scaramucci: Right? But But my point is, is that, you know, we knew each other 20 years ago, you rented me or sublet me, office space in on the west end of LA. And that was 20 years, Randy, watch me.
• 58:26
  Anthony Scaramucci: That was 20 years ago. Boom, here we are. So 20 years went by 22 By the way, just to be 22. I think you're right. 22. Okay, so that has served you well, the 22 years. And it has served me well. Why? Because we're doing what we like we're we're living our lives and we're doing what we like, if you're not doing what you like, wake up, get get control of your financial situation and start doing what you like. And Mel Brooks has the best line ever relax. None of us are getting out of here alive.
• 58:59
  Anthony Scaramucci: Relax. What are you going to do?
• 58:59
  Anthony Scaramucci: You know, that's, that's my attitude.
• 59:03
  Randall Kaplan: I'm going to just tick off a few things that you did and and by the way, so you leave Goldman you start your own firm, Oscar Capital Management. And just to tell the viewers and listeners what happened there. You were based in New York, your buddy from law school, Brent messing, he joins your firm, they need some office space and occupy had gone public. I took like a quarter floor of a building. I had a Bloomberg machine, which was fucking stupid. It was like$15,000 a month. I barely knew how to use it for stock quotes.
• 59:35
  Randall Kaplan: And then one day I woke up. What am I doing here? I'm going to sublease my space and move down the street. Brett walks in the next day. And he says, Okay, it's perfect. I'll take it. I want all the furniture. I'm going to pay costs for everything but I needed to move in on Thursday. Like two days later. I said, I'm keeping my desk I'm keeping the chairs and I'll be out and maybe a week I found a place down the street so so that's how we met. You've been a great friend ever since.
• 1:00:03
  Randall Kaplan: So you leave Goldman great store. You you start this firm.
• 1:00:09
  Randall Kaplan: The firm sold to Neuberger Berman Neuberger Berman is sold to Lehman Brothers. Thank God you got the fuck out of there a few years before that thing tanked and then you start skybridge I know you love what you do, but was one of the goals. At some point. You grew up middle class you saw your father working really hard times were not easy at times was was one of the goals to make a lot of money. I mean, a lot of my Wall Street friends they use the term fucking money. What was that? And you heard that term?
• 1:00:44
  Anthony Scaramucci: Yeah, that that wasn't it for me. You know, honestly, because, like you I'm still working, you know, so I didn't, once I reached escape velocity and add some level of financial independence. It wasn't like okay, well that's it let me go fishing or something like that I actually like what I'm doing. Let me, let me rephrase that I love what I'm doing. So I would be doing this, you know, this is something I love doing. You know, I love the challenge of it. I love the intellectual challenge of it. I mean, I was on the ropes last year. I mean, it wasn't going to, I wasn't going to miss a meal over it. But I was down 20% Last March, by the way, the Wall Street Journal made sure the entire world knew that. Now from April 1 to today, I'm up 45%.
• 1:01:29
  Anthony Scaramucci: Like I predicted the stuff was just oversold, technically. No one's gonna write that story.
• 1:01:39
  Anthony Scaramucci: You know, because it's a good news story. They only write the bad news story. I understand.
• 1:01:41
  Anthony Scaramucci: I'm a big boy, I'm not. I'm just making an observation. I'm not opining with any self pity. But I'm just saying to you, that was a real interesting, stressful because I don't like losing money for clients. But that was a real interesting challenge for me. And it got me actually exposed to different businesses.
• 1:02:00
  Anthony Scaramucci: It got me exposed to Bitcoin, which I ended up putting a half a billion dollars into bitcoin got several 100 million dollars in my series G fund and we have over $100 million. Now on our core, specialty Bitcoin fund, we did a couple of secondaries. You know, we've done chime, we're about to do a big secondary right now for a pre IPO company, which I wouldn't have done had I not gotten hit like that last year. So there's another learning lesson. You know, if you're out there, and you're working, luck, and stuff starts to come to you, you know, you're making your own luck for all your work and all your industry.
• 1:02:38
  Anthony Scaramucci: So it turns out my business is in way better shape, March of 2020, than it was in March of sorry, March of 2021, than it was in March of 2020. And that's through being a good entrepreneur and adapting. I think the point is, I'm not doing it for the money, Randy, I'm not doing it for the money.
• 1:02:59
  Randall Kaplan: You know, most people don't know that you're a money manager, I think, to the average American watching on Bill Maher, I mean, you're on TV, Fox, on Anderson Cooper, I mean, you're on TV every week, but I don't think people know actually what you do. So very, very briefly, because we have a lot to cover before we end today. Can you just talk about skybridge and maybe in one minute or less, because then I really want to move on. We have some great stuff to cover here.
• 1:03:27
  Anthony Scaramucci: So, you know, here's, here's what I would say, um, I manage money. I have a $9 billion money manager.
• 1:03:42
  Anthony Scaramucci: I started excelling in my career doing better when I got into the FA business financial advisory business High Net Worth business at Goldman. I created registered investment advisor, as you mentioned, I sold it, then I created this hedge fund advisory business, it's almost 16 years old. It'll be 16 years old on March 7, started March 7 2005.
• 1:04:01
  Anthony Scaramucci: And other than the 11 day fiasco, in Washington, that's what I was doing. And so but weirdly, Randy, as you know, if you watch CNBC, where I was a contributor for seven years, or business journalism, I was the host of Wall Street week. So there are people in the business ecosystem who actually knew who I was. But I got more notoriety in, let's say, infamy as a result of working for Donald Trump, so you can be in famous and you can be famous, or you can be both famous and famous. I happen to be both I think, you know, and, and but my core business is to run my team and to manage the $9 billion that we have under management, which we've done reasonably successfully. If you look at the track record. If you looked at our track record, and you hit a stopwatch on April 1 of last year, not not great. But if you take the stopwatch right now, when you look at the 20 year track where you're like, Wow, these guys know what they're doing. They they got great performance.
• 1:05:10
  Randall Kaplan: We're talking about the salt conference next, which started in May 2009. It's a conference of executives, hedge fund managers, thought leaders, politicians, really one of the best conferences that I've ever been to and the 11 years you've had it, or 12 years now it's grown to almost 2000 people. The speakers have ranged from President Biden and President Clinton and Tony Blair and Mike Bloomberg, Mark Cuban.
• 1:05:40
  Randall Kaplan: Mike Milken is one of my favorite the late Kobe Bryant as well. You have amazing bands there like Maroon Five Lenny Kravitz is played there. It's one of the best networking places I think in the world, you get to 1000 Finance types there, you can walk up to people I wanted to meet Mark Cuban, I walked up to him, by the way, you've been very generous to me in terms of the access there. So I'm grateful for that. Thank you so much. Is you we've all heard the phrase, it's not what you know, it's who you know. So at what age, you went into politics, to meet people, but at what age for people who want to be successful and be the best that they can be? When should they stop thinking about networking? And what's the, what should they do? What's their plan?
• 1:06:29
  Anthony Scaramucci: Oh, I mean, listen, I I think about it organically. Like I don't wake up in the morning and say, Okay, I gotta do some networking today. I think about it.
• 1:06:39
  Anthony Scaramucci: organically, I'm like, okay, you know, I want to meet people, I want to meet more people, there may be things in my career that they will benefit from, where they could avail themselves of something I'm doing or vice versa. And what I would tell people is think non linear, don't be transactional, don't be transparently quid pro quo. You know, like you said, something very nice. Of course, I would be willing to extend my network to you. I'm not but you've
• 1:07:10
  Randall Kaplan: been, you've been, you've been exceedingly nice. I mean, I just want to say that
• 1:07:14
  Anthony Scaramucci: for you to say that, but I'm not looking for anything. I appreciate that.
• 1:07:16
  Anthony Scaramucci: But I'm not looking for anything in exchange. My attitude is, that's good karma generation.
• 1:07:23
  Anthony Scaramucci: And it comes back, you know, you and I are close friends, I, I've met different people. I've met Richard Branson as a result of that, or I did somebody a favor.
• 1:07:30
  Anthony Scaramucci: And now all of a sudden, they become my friend. You know, Ben Franklin had one of the best American aphorisms. If you want to make a friend ask somebody for a favor. And when you think about it's so counterintuitive, but it's such genius, because we're primordial ly developed as social creatures. And we like reciprocating towards each other. And so when someone asks you to do something for them, and you go out of your way to do it, you're making the person feel good, like they've done somebody a good good deed. And now there's some bonding that takes place. So I would just tell people, allow it to flow, let it be organic, but no, You never stop networking. I would say the people. I mean, this is one of the positives of politics. Randy, I'll be honest with you about this. I mean, I've been honest about everything. I don't mean to say like, but I mean, I hate when people say that, because they're honest. Like that, but I, I met I met this way. Yeah, I didn't mean to say that I delete that Ctrl Alt Delete. But I mean to say, I mean to say that some of the experience working for Donald Trump was traumatic, some of it setback, my career probably cost me some money almost cost me my relationship with my wife who I love. But some of that experience, Silver Lining perspective was quite good for me, because it made me more humble, maybe more psychologically minded, and it ridiculously expanded my network accidentally. So I have a good relationship, Bill Maher. Now, you said you saw me on the show a few times, you know, Bill, our clothes, were a piece of the Mets. He's a great human being, you know, we have lunch or dinner together when I'm in LA.
• 1:09:19
  Anthony Scaramucci: And once in a while invite me on the show. I have a relationship with tons of different people.
• 1:09:24
  Anthony Scaramucci: I'm not just trying to put out a celebrity. I'm not saying it like that I have tons of different people that I've encountered as a direct result of the fact that I went through that experience. And so that's another thing for your listeners, you know, it may look like a bad thing at the time.
• 1:09:42
  Anthony Scaramucci: But it may turn out to be a good thing you don't know go to Cape, stay calm. Trust the flow, trust the process.
• 1:09:51
  Randall Kaplan: All right, let's get into politics now. And I want to break it down pre Trump and post Trump so pre Trump, you're supporting Barack Obama, a classmate of yours from Harvard. You also supported Hillary Clinton, both Democrats in 2008, you will hold a fundraiser for Barack Obama, who beats John McCain and wins the presidency and Obama's third sister party.
• 1:10:14
  Anthony Scaramucci: I bundled money for him. I mean, I was really raising the money. Yeah.
• 1:10:18
  Randall Kaplan: And so you're out there for Obama, but two years later, you told them at a CPC event cnvc Event to stop whacking Wall Street like a pinata, what was the whacking?
• 1:10:32
  Anthony Scaramucci: I mean, the whole thing got taken out of I mean, this is the problem with the media and everything. From my perspective. I think that whole thing got taken out of context. I was trying to lay him up. Okay, so raise my hand he says Anthony a present at work great. You know, and he says, Yeah, you look like we could still play hoops together. He made some kind of off the cuff joke We both laughed, myself aside set up. There's an intersection between Wall Street and Main Street. And it's very vital to the economy. I said, but we're laying all the blame on the crisis on Wall Street. So why are we whacking Wall Street?
• 1:11:11
  Anthony Scaramucci: Like a pin yada? Why don't we just work on a way to heal the country? And he's a politician, by the way, okay. So he seized on that and he started his political rat a tat tat, that Wall Street this and Wall Street dad and Steve Schwarzman with carried interest and he ran a tad tatted me for about 10 minutes. And then typical of him, the show is over. He walks over to me, he puts his hand out like this that gripped me in a certain handshake. And it's like mooch, you know, it's just politics hoping not offend. And that's everything you need to know about Washington, you know, it's a game, right? So, but what I was trying to do was, say there's a healthy nexus between those two sectors of our lives, and let's figure out a way to harmonize them again. But we're not going to do that, because we need scapegoats. Now, we're demonizing and we have the politicization and the polemics and so forth, and that's fine. I mean, you know, I don't I don't know how we're going to fix that, actually. And, you know, I remain hopeful. But it was no offense to President Obama. I liked him. I bent to more White House Christmas parties under his term, that I was at Donald Trump Christmas parties, zero, Donald Trump cares party. And I like President Obama. I like Michelle Obama, First Lady Obama, and I always got along with him. But my politics were always center, right? They were more Republican. Now. I'm gonna tell you why. And I gotta go back to 1982. I'm filling out my Selective Service Card at the post office. My father's with me. I'm also going to register to vote I have to register to vote. Hey, Pops, am I a Democrat or a Republican? My father looks Oh, no, no, you're a Republican.
• 1:12:58
  Anthony Scaramucci: You're a pump put down Republican. And David Axelrod is the only person that I've met.
• 1:13:02
  Anthony Scaramucci: And I did his podcast a few years ago. He said, Anthony, you're a Republican, because your father's union was controlled by Joe Marciana, who was the head of the Republican Party in Nassau County. And I looked at him, I said, David, how the hell did you know that?
• 1:13:19
  Anthony Scaramucci: He goes, Yeah, because I've studied union politics, there were only three counties in all of the United States, where the Republicans controlled the union, and that was one of the counties because you're really a centrist. You know, you're agnostic on social issues. And but you're, you're a Republican, because your father was in a union controlled by the Republicans? 100%? Correct.
• 1:13:40
  Anthony Scaramucci: 100%. So after the Obama situation, which was a higher profile, fundraise, because he was president, I remember saying this to him, think about how ironic your life is. I remember saying it to him, and I think I did call him Barack at the time.
• 1:13:55
  Anthony Scaramucci: Let's use President Obama to be respectful. But he wasn't president at the time. But I said, you know, let me say, Senator, Senator, I'm going to do this for you. Because you know, you may actually be president and then I'll be able to tell people that actually knew what President because I never thought I was gonna ever meet a president growing up on Long Island and my dad's blue collar family. I didn't think I was ever going to meet a president. You say to me, and so that's 2008 2009 We do this all conference. 2010 Bill Clinton shows up 2011 George Bush shows up, you know, and then all of a sudden now I'm working for Mitt Romney. Mitt Romney shows up at the salt conference. He almost makes the presidency of the loses pretty handily to Brock Obama. And now I'm with Jeb Bush, and and Scott Walker. And then now we got the Trump interplay. I think Trump is not as I said, as much on television. Everybody has railed on Trump, by the way, Nikki Haley.
• 1:14:51
  Randall Kaplan: Mike was great.
• 1:14:51
  Randall Kaplan: By the way. She's one of my favorites who would have been at the conference, by the way, I was just so healing with her.
• 1:14:56
  Randall Kaplan: Oh,
• 1:14:58
  Anthony Scaramucci: like Nikki, I mean, she's flopping around right now on Trump. She's gonna have to find her bearings on Trump, but I like her. I've always I have a lot of respect for her. But she is flip flopping around on him right now. He's a goon you know, I mean, you gotta just call him a goon you know? I mean, I don't know why they're doing this. He sounds like a blithering idiot.
• 1:15:13
  Anthony Scaramucci: Why they're paying this much attention to him. I have no idea. I mean, just let him out the pasture. That's it. There's some things he did good. Let's look at what it was that things he did. Well, there's other things he was terrible. I put them out to pasture. You know what I'm saying but but any any event? I made a mistake and everybody went through the same thing with Trump hated him thought he was a goon. Rudy Giuliani thought he was a goon or supporting Jeb Bush. You pick a person that worked for Donald Trump, they all thought he was a goon. So here's the arc goon.
• 1:15:48
  Anthony Scaramucci: Holy shit. He's president. Let me just figure out a way to like them. Wait a minute. It's impossible to like him. He's a goon. So that's the ark. You go from goon. Let me try to like them to goon. And so they're all going to be there. They're all going to be there. They're all kissing his you know what right now because they think it's good for their power base or they don't want to get primaried, or they're trying to make money off of it like him. It's a big con.
• 1:16:09
  Anthony Scaramucci: But they're all they'll all be there. So this is despicable thing to watch. It happened to be honest.
• 1:16:18
  Randall Kaplan: When did you meet him for the first time?
• 1:16:21
  Anthony Scaramucci: I can tell you exactly when I met him. The first time was May of 1995. I was at Goldman. I was in private banking. My old boss from the real estate department that fired me. Mike Vasotec tell he took me to his office to meet him. I was an impressionable. 31 year old. I had think I had met two celebrities in my life. At that point. I had met Arnold Schwarzenegger, because we were running his money. I happen to be on a team. There was a place called like shot ces or something like that in Santa Monica and on Main Street. Yeah.
• 1:16:56
  Anthony Scaramucci: So I used to go there and have lunch with him and Maria Shriver. And I think the other famous person that I met in the 90s was Donald Trump. And so it was a very impressionable meeting for me. I'm sure he doesn't remember it from a hole in the wall. And, and the funny thing is when you fast forward was the same office the same setting. The guy never changed the way his office looked in like 30 years, but I didn't really get to know know him.
• 1:17:22
  Anthony Scaramucci: Until I worked at CNBC. I was a contributor to CNBC. He was at NBC. We crossed paths. We went to couple parties. I met him there then with a Robin Hood, the charity. I met him there was always very nice to me. He was always complimentary, my television presentation. And then we got to know each other better during the Romney fundraising. We did two fundraising events in his triplex apartment at Trump Tower. And, again, I helped them raise a lot of money. He was very nice to me. And so he called me and booked a breakfast with me. The day after the apprentice was over. I said to my sister, oh, sure. I'll go over and see him and went over see him? What was it I grade on the TV less? I mean, that was like, it wasn't a great. It's I don't know, I wasn't watching you. You were the only one not watching me to the ratings were great. And he said, Well, that's it. I am running for president and you're good on television.
• 1:18:25
  Anthony Scaramucci: You don't have to give me any money. I just want your advocacy. And so I want you to come work for me. I laughed. I said, You're not running for president. I said, I mean, you read 2% in the polls, you're not going to run for president.
• 1:18:37
  Anthony Scaramucci: Because if you're like everybody else, you're my 2%. But I'm gonna go right to the top of the polls, and I'm gonna stay there till I win. Which he did, by the way. And I said to him, Well, you know, I'm with Scott Walker.
• 1:18:47
  Anthony Scaramucci: But Scott's you know, I don't know if he's got the lakes for this. I said, but I'll end up being with Jeb Bush. I actually was with Scott Walker. They met him through the recall. He asked me for the favor. I said, Fine.
• 1:18:59
  Anthony Scaramucci: If he doesn't make it. I'll be with Jeb Bush. I said, but you're not really running for president. He's Oh, no, I'm running us. I'll tell you what, after I knock those two lightweights is that he talks right out of the race. Come work for me. So he shook his hand. I said, Yeah. All right. I'll tell you what, if you knock those two guys out of the race, I'll come work with you. He knocked him out of the race, I went to go work for him. That was like one of the biggest mistakes that I've made in my life could be one of the big if not the biggest. And then the situation unfolded. And the rest is history. But like I said, there was a silver lining to it too, in terms of like the exposure and I have a much bigger network today than I would have because of that. So big learning experience. Very humbling. You know, so, you know, I don't regret it, Randy. But it was a mistake because he was incompetent. It wasn't capable of handling the presidency. And he's a malevolent guy. He's like, he's not a fun guy. He's like a malevolent, nasty guy when he went after Dierdre on Twitter. That's that was like terrible. Okay, you're gonna have to my wife on Twitter. Do I look like Ted Cruz? I mean, we talk about my neighborhood, there is no chance that I was gonna let that stand. I just started pounding him into the ground. Then he tried to come back at me and I pounded him harder than his staff said, You got to stop going back and he's getting 50 70,000 Twitter followers every time you hit him. And he doesn't care. I mean, me, I don't care if you want to come at me, I'll come at you 10 times harder. And I then I realized that we got to beat them. And then I just started working. And then I figured out how to beat him. I couldn't beat him with white people, particularly white. Italians like that. My neighborhood voted for him. But the neighborhoods in Philly, the neighborhoods in Detroit that you grew up in, they all voted for him. Trust me. I know those people. So I went into the African American communities. And I worked on voter registration and I did had tremendous amounts of radio. I didn't just do CNBC, and MSNBC, I did local television in local markets in swing states. And I did a tremendous amount of radio. I'm not saying I helped, or I didn't, but at least I was part of explaining how terrible this guy is and how terrible he was, you know, and we would have been really informed to have a one. I mean, you'd have over a million people dead from this virus, you know.
• 1:21:21
  Randall Kaplan: You know, I think it's interesting, because I do think I mean, I know you're very well respected. You're very articulate. I do think it made a difference, what I think is important. People who don't like Trump saw a lot of people John Kelly, and Bolton, you know, all come out and criticize him after they left. I mean, you knew him very well. You were in the Oval Office. I think that's,
• 1:21:49
  Anthony Scaramucci: I think I tried not to criticize, listen, I it took me two years after my firing to admonish people and say, I'm sorry, I can no longer support this man, and what he's doing. So it wasn't like, you know, I was trying to be a loyal Republican, and I was not okay, it didn't work out. The guy's a little nuts. I got fired, but I got fired for a stupid mistake that I made. I'm accountable for it. I wasn't blaming anybody. As I mentioned, General Kelly and I are good friends today. No problem being fired, even though it was, you know, gut wrenching to get lit up in the media like that. No problem. But it was the persistency of his behavior and the recklessness of his behaviors like, Okay, I can't support this is crazy.
• 1:22:35
  Randall Kaplan: Alright, let's talk about something related.
• 1:22:38
  Randall Kaplan: It's something that we all experience, I think, in our lifetime, the ability to try to overcome incredibly difficult odds. I mean, here was a guy.
• 1:22:44
  Randall Kaplan: There were 12 candidates in the race when he said, I want to be president. I was actually at my best friend's wedding at Mar a Lago in November. It's actually my birthday, November 22 2015.
• 1:22:53
  Randall Kaplan: He was there. It was a hedge fund crowd, very wealthy crowd.
• 1:22:58
  Randall Kaplan: He comes down, people taking photos with him. Everyone was mocking him laughing, laughing with him. And then then you see right before, a week before he comes out on tape, he's got the sexual harassment thing. He talks about women's vaginas. He actually used a different word like that. And let's go outside of politics for a second. We talked about 18 years ago, these two guys, Barton Eberhard and Mark tepin. And he had an idea for a new car company, you plug it into the wall, you're competing with General Motors, Ford, Mercedes, you know, General Motors that year, that$194 billion in revenue and 3.6 billion in net income. But it didn't matter to these guys. You know, they said, Fuck it, I'm gonna take them on. When you see things like this, and when we're talking about people who want to pursue against the Isaiah, they want to succeed no matter what it takes. What's the message to our viewers and our listeners?
• 1:24:00
  Randall Kaplan: Is it to dream big? And anything is possible. That's one of my mottos. Anything is possible?
• 1:24:08
  Anthony Scaramucci: Well, I would say that anything is possible, and you have to dream big. But you also you're talking about Tesla, obviously, in Elon Musk. He's a very unique guy.
• 1:24:20
  Anthony Scaramucci: You know, Elon Musk is an engineer. And he has got a knack for execution and Elon Musk.
• 1:24:24
  Anthony Scaramucci: There's a bid ask spread between Elon Musk's persona and what he's actually doing for a living. Okay, this guy is a phenomenal manager. He is a phenomenal delegator, and he has an executable vision. And he is great at hiring people. Okay, so this guy fits your boxes of excellence, every box. He's a little bit of a kook when he's on Joe Rogan. Or if he does your podcast, and he's smoking a blunt and he axle nuts. But that's part of his shtick, and it's part of his persona. You see what I mean? And, and so I admire him. And it's not clear to me that everybody can be him, right? There's three or four people at the top of the mountain. And so what I would say to your listeners, is, you don't have to be him. You can be you and you can dig deep and think about what it is inside you, that you like. So again, you you have a mind for engineering, you're able to see Akamine before others, you took the risk you exploited it. You stayed with it, when there were periods of uncertainty and doubt right, or they say the FUD fear, uncertainty and doubt. And so you develop this excellence somebody like me, I think one of my traits is persistency. And resilience. I don't care, you want to roll me and glass, make fun of me in late night television, you want to attack me on TV on live television? No problem. Let's keep rolling.
• 1:26:09
  Anthony Scaramucci: Let's make it work. And so I would say to your listeners, think about what it is about yourself. Because believe it or not, inside your personality, there is something and I don't know what it is okay, but each person has it. And you then have to overcome the fear of expressing it. And I can tell you that the people in my life I can sense right away, Randy, when they've overcome the fear of being who they were meant to be, once you see it happen.
• 1:26:46
  Anthony Scaramucci: You're like, okay, this person, man or woman, this person is living their true self. And so for me, that's excellent. It's not a comparative thing. Let me compare myself to ABC, x, y, z, z, y, x. No, everybody's got a unique personality. Everybody's coming in with strengths and weaknesses. And oh, by the way, you make a terrible mistake.
• 1:27:09
  Anthony Scaramucci: When you compare yourself to somebody cuz you don't know their upbringing. You don't know what their struggles were or what their obstacles were or what their benefits were, you don't know. You can't, you can never figure it out from just looking at the person. So focus inward, focus on yourself, and overcome the fear. And that anxiety of falling down. And, you know, I took my grandmother Seriously, she told me what other people think of me is none of my business. And that's very hard to do. But I took it seriously. So when I was getting lit up, or someone said some bad things about me or Okay, that's their point of view, don't care.
• 1:27:49
  Anthony Scaramucci: Lock on the target. Let's, let's generate some success. But I'm also Italian so let's not forget that Okay, so like my Uncle Sal.
• 1:27:58
  Anthony Scaramucci: Is 94. Do you know what Italian Alzheimer's is? No. You forget everything. But the grudges, Randy forget everything, but the gracias que. So my uncle is 94.
• 1:28:05
  Anthony Scaramucci: And he gets up in the morning.
• 1:28:10
  Anthony Scaramucci: I'm not going to tell you to guide he hates. But he gets up in the morning and he getting ready to brush his teeth and shave. He says you know, Johnny Googlebots? Is he still alive?
• 1:28:20
  Anthony Scaramucci: The answer is yes. He goes like you're gonna live one more goddamn day. Now he wants to outlive the guy that he hates.
• 1:28:25
  Anthony Scaramucci: So hit me up. 500 Probably my point is, you know, everybody's motivated by different things.
• 1:28:30
  Anthony Scaramucci: Okay, I don't have to hate me.
• 1:28:33
  Anthony Scaramucci: But I'm just making the joke that you know, whatever it is, she got going just go with it.
• 1:28:36
  Anthony Scaramucci: You know, he's done pretty well, at 94.
• 1:28:41
  Randall Kaplan: You're one of the best public speakers I've ever seen. I talked about it before. You're I said this already. You're articulate your intelligence shows through your insightful. You're funny. I mean, you make people laugh.
• 1:28:54
  Randall Kaplan: It's been I think, well, I know, it's been one of the hallmarks of your career. And it's one of the things that I think from where I'm sitting has made you successful, you can deal with people, you're great at dealing with people to say it's true, how important is public speaking to our success? And how did you do it? Is it natural? Should people work on this? Is it important to their success? Oh, I
• 1:29:19
  Anthony Scaramucci: mean, we all we all have different theories about public speaking. So I mean, you know, I've read that, you know, it's one of the most fearful things for people and they say that it's like fear of death and public speaking.
• 1:29:31
  Anthony Scaramucci: They're like almost the same.
• 1:29:31
  Anthony Scaramucci: But here's what I would say about public speaking. You have to practice it. And I put the 10,000 hours and you know, Malcolm Gladwell is book, you know, blank, I put the 10,000 hours in, I have done at least 10,000 hours of television appearances, podcasts, public speeches, assault conferences, live stage events I have put the time in, so you can't just walk to the podium. Also, you could ask anybody on television. Are you nervous the first time you were on TV? And I would say the most honest people say yes. Now, the last thing I would say is what I told my daughter about stage fright. She's 12 years old. She's a singer. She's doing pretty well with her career.
• 1:30:28
  Anthony Scaramucci: It's been slightly sidetracked by COVID. But I'm very optimistic for her. She's got a great singing voice. And she was 12 years old. She's singing at Shea Stadium, and she's gonna sing God bless America. seventh inning. 12 years old. 53,000 people. Johan Santana is pitching. Daddy, I'm very nervous. I've never I mean this is the most people as well. This will probably be the Most people you ever perform for life in your life? I mean, this is the stadium that The Beatles performed in in 1964. And that you're at capacity. So the reason I want you to do this is that for the rest of your life, you'll be able to say, well, I sang in front of 55,000 people, but I got 1000 people at a Broadway theater or I met them.
• 1:31:12
  Anthony Scaramucci: No, it's always your comparatively right. But here's the thing ready, don't ever forget this. And as I said, in my dorm, every person in that stadium is one person. So every single person, Amelia, if I put that person right in front of you, you could have a conversation with you feel very relaxed, and you could sing for.
• 1:31:35
  Anthony Scaramucci: And if you dial into that idea that you're now just singing to one person 53,000 times, you'll recognize that there's just people and all of that self consciousness and all that fear will go away. And then after all, you are Italian, you like talking or singing, they can't even respond to you. Like, I love being on television.
• 1:31:54
  Anthony Scaramucci: Because if you're talking to 2 million people, 3 million people, they can't talk back, they have to listen to you, for sons of bitches. So the point I'm making to her is the point I would make to anybody public speaking. Certainly some people are better at it than others.
• 1:32:10
  Anthony Scaramucci: Certainly, John Kennedy was more charismatic than Richard Nixon.
• 1:32:15
  Anthony Scaramucci: Richard Nixon could have practiced that for a million years. Kennedy had a certain charm and swagger. Okay. Sean Connery as James Bond, I mean to catch James Bond, okay. I mean, come on. He's got that move. You know what I mean? And, you know, you can you can, you can put Mike Myers in that role. Mike Myers could play awesome powers, but he can't play James Bond like Sean Connery, I mean, so we're all naturally gifted, different ways. But here's the thing I would say, you couldn't learn it. You got to practice it. And you got to dial out of your fear basis of it. And if you can do that, you end up being a pretty good public speaker.
• 1:32:53
  Randall Kaplan: We talked about your suits and I was going to talk about this before you mentioned that you're wearing custom loro Piana suits these days. It looks fantastic.
• 1:33:03
  Randall Kaplan: Briony, you're on. Okay. Well, we don't want to leave out.
• 1:33:07
  Randall Kaplan: I'm wearing. I'm wearing stuff I wore like 1981 gym class for the podcast. I thought it was a audio podcast, but that's fine.
• 1:33:14
  Randall Kaplan: I mean, this is my normal.
• 1:33:14
  Randall Kaplan: You're catching me in my natural habitat.
• 1:33:18
  Randall Kaplan: Perfect. That's what we want.
• 1:33:18
  Randall Kaplan: Like you. When I was a second year law student and these firms I had to go in the interview. I didn't have a good suit. I didn't have shoes. I remember calling my mom from Johnson and Murphy. Hey, I need shoes for this. They're expensive. We helped me pay for this. I bought my suit at TJ Maxx. And you take pride in what you you wear like, like you if I have two people that I want to hire and one is frumpy and a polyester suit like you say and one looks good. I'm going to hire the guy that looks good or the woman looks good every single time. These are intangibles. I think they're critical to our success. What are some of the other ones? You dress? Well, what what else would you focus on? High level?
• 1:34:02
  Randall Kaplan: Well, giving people a high level
• 1:34:04
  Anthony Scaramucci: I would say be prompt. That'll increase your odds of success. Don't be late for meetings. I know that sounds cliche. Something that Li Ka Shing. The American the the Hong Kong Chinese property tycoon said to me when I was 35, he said Anthony leave money on the table for your partners, you'll always have success. If you do that. Don't look for the last dollar and a deal. Don't be overly transactional. Help people's children. I don't know how to express that to you better than that. If if somebody like we talked about Billy Tommaso my father would have given Billy Tomas was two kidneys. Okay, the help he gave me and my brother, do you know what I mean? So if your bladder your way, and you help people's children, they never forget that, you know, try to help people. So here's the other thing. We're in a canceled culture. Now we're in this, like insidious thing where, you know, if you haven't been canceled, they're going to try to cancel you. I mean, it's it's crazy, right? I mean, you know, it's crazy. And so people fall from grace. And they get beat up in our society now and they get thrown into the ash heap. Don't do that. You know, I can't tell you the number of people that I have brought a box of doughnuts to and a cup of Joe, two that have lost a job. And they're like, Well, you know, you're no longer I'm no longer powerful.
• 1:35:33
  Anthony Scaramucci: Why are you standing here with the doughnuts? Because you're a good guy, or you're a good woman. And so I just want to let you know, you haven't lost me as a friend, because your power position dropped. And if you do that, what ends up happening is you're like an authentic person.
• 1:35:50
  Anthony Scaramucci: And people were like, hey, that's cool. And then you know, what goes around comes around.
• 1:35:53
  Anthony Scaramucci: You know, when I got blown out of the White House that was a rough moment for me. And you know, the media was ridiculing me, a lot of them didn't like Trump. So we're taking that out on me. They were rolling me hard. I can't tell you, Randy, yourself included, the number of people that reached out to me to offer me help and support, whether it was Michael Milken, Randall Kaplan, Richard Branson, I could I mean, I don't mean to be name dropping, I'm friends of mine from high school, that Reclaimers you know, pizza guy, sending me food to the house, you understand what I'm saying?
• 1:36:36
  Anthony Scaramucci: And you want to be that person, you don't want to be the guy that falls from grace. And more people like, Yes, I'm glad the guys on his knees, let's punch him in the head harder if you find them saying, so be nice to people, it will come back to you will definitely come back to you.
• 1:36:52
  Randall Kaplan: You really find out who your friends are. When you're down. It's really amazing. When you're on top of the world, everybody wants to be your friend. And when you're down. What I've also found too, you know, when you're on top of the world, there's a lot of people who are really not that happy for you. It's kind of one of these weird things, I think.
• 1:37:10
  Anthony Scaramucci: And let me give you some advice on that.
• 1:37:11
  Anthony Scaramucci: Not that you need it from me.
• 1:37:11
  Anthony Scaramucci: But let me give you some advice on that the best among us. The best among us choose not to judge human frailty too harshly.
• 1:37:20
  Anthony Scaramucci: That is a human weakness that's born from the atavistic nature of wanting our genes to progress when someone else is doing better. Our primordial responses, jealousy and envy.
• 1:37:32
  Anthony Scaramucci: And it's very primordial. And it's not well thought out the transcendental experience, where you move from the animal to the sublime and you become more human, is when you recognize there are many fish in the sea.
• 1:37:49
  Anthony Scaramucci: And that everybody is on a different life experience. And everybody's on a different arc.
• 1:37:52
  Anthony Scaramucci: And there's no need to compare your material to somebody else's. And what you should do is dial into your life, with its own gratitude, and its own measure of success, whatever it might be, once you do that, which is an inward move, you become resoundingly happy. If you're going to make a comparison between yourself and everybody else on the planet.
• 1:38:15
  Anthony Scaramucci: First of all, you're not Damn you don't even know what how they grew up, you know anything about their lives. then secondarily, you drive yourself crazy, you know, and it's very primordial. And it requires maturity to go in the other direction.
• 1:38:30
  Randall Kaplan: We're almost at the end, you've been very generous with your time so I'm going to be mindful of it, but I want to end it on philanthropy.
• 1:38:35
  Randall Kaplan: You're involved in a lot of things the US Olympic Is it the Paralympic? Is that how you say at the Paralympic foundation?
• 1:38:46
  Randall Kaplan: Paralympic yet foundation? Yep. I was involved with that for five years. Yep.
• 1:38:52
  Randall Kaplan: A Brain Tumor Foundation, Kennedy Center. How important is it in our In Search of Excellence to give back to the community, it's one, for me, it's one of the most important if not the single most important thing I've been able to do in my career,
• 1:39:10
  Anthony Scaramucci: you know this better than anybody. But my joy comes from that, you know, my joy, I got to help some of my family members, obviously, like I told you, you know, support my parents, of course, you know, and other family members. First of all, the fact that the good Lord gave me the skill set, and the brain chemistry to be on the giving side of things. I'm so grateful to that. And then secondarily, when you're helping somebody like when you're quietly paying those tuitions for people, or you take one of your nieces, you make sure all of their college tuition is paid for. And they don't have to go to college or school debt is the greatest feeling in the world. I don't think there's any better feeling than that. I mean, yeah, I mean, I'm talking about psychologically, I mean, of course, you could have sex. I mean, that's a different feeling. But I'm talking about your brain is set on fire by the giving your brain is set on fire. By creating those moments for yourself when you're helping somebody out. If you're a happy person, you are totally wired to help. You're wired for that.
• 1:40:31
  Anthony Scaramucci: One,
• 1:40:32
  Randall Kaplan: or the end and I just want to give you the opportunity, what what topics are not topics but what advice specific advice you have for people, our viewers and our listeners to be the very best they can achieve and to achieve true excellence in their lives in their career. Are you? Okay?
• 1:40:54
  Randall Kaplan: Well, I
• 1:40:55
  Anthony Scaramucci: mean, it's very, I don't want to make it too simple, but it's sort of simple. And there's three things that go on in my head. Number one, overcome fear have to do that. If you want to achieve excellence, you're dreaming something big, you've got to overcome your fear of it, you have to overcome it. The second thing is you have to overcome the fear of failure and the failure. So you have to overcome both of those things. And so you have to relax. If you're not doing well, I get fired from the white as we get to do. I don't wake up in the morning, kick myself in the pants, I made a mistake in the White House, move on. The last piece of this thing is the most important thing.
• 1:41:34
  Anthony Scaramucci: Forgive yourself. For give yourself, the millstone of regret the millstone of I should have went left I went right. Oh, let me think about it for another day. Forget it, you know, Woody Allen, take the millstone of regret, drop it, and move forward. And think about how exciting tomorrow is going to be. And if you've made a mistake in the past, write down what you learn from it, try not to repeat it, and move forward. If you do those three things, you're getting so close to what you need to be, you know, this and I know this is five or 10% extra effort, Randy, but it's the mindset. And it's the conditioning to the circumstances. It's not what is happening to you, but how you handle it, that allows you to grow, you see. And if you do those three things, you know, you're well on your way.
• 1:42:35
  Randall Kaplan: Awesome advice.
• 1:42:35
  Randall Kaplan: I can't thank you enough, Anthony for the show.