What's the biggest mistake that you've made that you're actually grateful that it happened?
Wow, that's such a big question. I'm going to answer that on a personal level. I did some things in my marriage that I totally regret. I'm probably not going to go into that deep of a detail because it would be unfair to my wife. But I think that that caused us to almost get divorced. And so I'm going to give you a blame attribution. Like some people say, oh, you know, it takes two people to tango, but I would say I was 90% culpable for the problems in our marriage. I don't think it's ever 100. And it forced me to have a reckoning. I really love my wife. We were filed for divorce. I went to her cap in hand and said, 'Let's we should really try to reconcile this.' Thank God she still loved me. And we were able to reconcile it. And I think our marriage is stronger today than ever before. So, I would never want to go through that again, Doug. I'm not saying that or anything like that, but I feel like where the bone broke, it set and fused a lot stronger. So, I mean, that's about as honest and about as open scraping the bark off as you can possibly be.
I think I was reading in an article that a lot of those problems stemmed from your time as communications director. Is that correct?
Well, it was, you know, it was my Trump experience, frankly. You know, she didn't like him. She had a lot of evidence to support why she didn't like him. She didn't want me to go work for him. You know, that was another mistake by the way for me. Okay. Now, that was this is a big message for people that listen to your programming, there is silver lining in mistakes. There are, you know, if you can have enough self-awareness, and this is the good news. If you're listening to Doug's show, you probably have enough self-awareness to be able to admit when you're getting things wrong. And guess what? Join the club because I have yet to meet a human being that hasn't gotten something wrong. But I do meet human beings that are mendacious to themselves and they try. Look at me, Doug. Watch. And and if you've got viewers on, if you got listeners, I'm making the scarecrow move of the Wizard of Oz where my fingers are pointing in different directions. It's not my fault, Doug. Okay? Anything bad happened to me is somebody else's fault. Look at me. Okay? Let me play the victim. Let me play the victim. See what I mean? You can't do that. You got to own this. Okay, you got to own who you are and you got to own the fallibility and you have to have a reckoning with it. And if you're able to do that, you can you can bring yourself to a higher plane mentally and cognitively.
Speaking of playing the victim, there would have been a lot of people in your position that could have chosen that route. I mean, think about that time in your life. I mean, not only are you stepping down, you know, getting, you know, let go as communications director, you're being publicly humiliated. Now you got your marriage on the rocks. Now you're, you know, your marriage is on the rocks because of this person who's now humiliating you. Like, how did you stay grounded during that moment of your life and not feel sorry for yourself?
Well, I mean, let me let me let you know, let me add one more thing. Can I add one more thing? I missed the birth of my son while I was in the White House. Okay. It grates on my ass. It bothers me to this day. I was in the I was in the West Virginia woods at the Boy Scout camp July 24th, 2017, and I missed James' birthday. Now, Dear and I were already fighting, but I would like to think I would have been able to present at his birth. And I missed it. You know, there was a 60-mile no-fly zone around the president's plane. I was out there with 35 miles out from the plane. There was no way for me to get back. Now, that should have been a private moment, but let me tell you how vicious Washington is. There were a few people inside the White House that hated my guts. And so, they leaked that to the tabloids, okay? So, that got plastered on the front page of the New York Post, okay, as I was going down and as I was getting fired. Okay? So, they were really trying to torch me. And that's the viciousness of Washington. Okay? So, now here's the learning lesson from all of that. If you go to play in the NFL, Doug, and you get yourself a concussion, guess what? That's what happens when you play in the NFL. If you're going to go into presidential politics at the highest level of the American government, you don't have to watch House of Cards. You know intuitively that these are vicious animalistic people and especially if they're rivals of yours, they're going to try to cut your head off. Okay? And so, what do you do? You got to take it. And so, how do you not play the victim? You have to be aware of your surroundings and you have to be aware of your expected outcomes. Now, that was a pretty rough outcome, you know, on the scale of distributed outcomes, distributive outcomes, but that was the outcome. And so, I always tell people the number one human emotion that I disdain and I tell my kids, I don't want to hear it, is self-pity. Okay? Because what self-pity means is you have entitlement. And if you have entitlement, you think you deserve this or it should happen this way, you're going to get your clock knocked and you have to have low expectations and high output. Now, I curse a lot, but let me tell you the two worst words in the language, and they're not curse words. You want to hear them, okay? Should and ought. You know, Doug, I ought to have had a successful career in Washington. I should have gotten into that school. I ought to have gotten and 39 on the ACT or I guess a 36 or whatever the high level is. My point is I don't want to hear from my kids should and ought. The world is the way it is. You got to accept the highs and lows of things and you have to dig in. You have to dig in. And so I'm getting my ass kicked. Let me go over the week. Okay. I am fired. I'm humiliated by the press. I'm ripped up by the late night comedians. I'm destroyed on cable news. I am My wife has filed for divorce. My business is under pressure. Okay. What do you do? You got to get up, dust yourself off, and get going. And and that's really all you can do. And and and Doug, one last point. When you're making mistakes, you have to have to have to forgive yourself because if you don't forgive yourself, I mean, we you know, look, I'm I got raised Catholic. So, what do you get? We get taught, oh, you got to forgive other people. You know, seek redemption from God, blah, blah, okay? You know what you have to do? You have to also forgive yourself. So, I don't wake up in the morning with a millstone of regret on my neck and say, 'Oh, I did something stupid in the White House, or I made this mistake or that mistake.' You got to let things go. You can't kick yourself in the pants in the morning. And that's another big lesson that I learned through that odyssey that I went through. But, you know, it was an ego-based decision. It was a it was a stupid decision, but I think it made me stronger. I think it made me more psychologically minded. And you know, I don't like the president. I mean, I know this isn't a political podcast, but I feel like my infamy of getting fired like that gave me a platform to stand on so that I could at least use my intellectual skills to posit and also use my intellectual skills in business or in life or in literature. And so, weirdly, there was a silver lining in that. And that's a big message for your people that listen to you as well. Can happen badly. pull. Look, if it's health and you're on the way out, well, that also happens on Earth. You know, we're gonna have to face our maker at some point. But if it's not health, we got to get our mindset right to go forward.
I don't know if you've been following the the rebirth of Hunter Biden, but I had Hunter on the show.
You did? Okay. Yeah. I got to go look at that show. I've seen others shows of yours. I'll go check that one out. But you're what you're saying reminds me of him like somebody who was publicly humiliated over and over again and it gave him this platform that now he's using to talk about recovery and to talk about helping people and to talk about bettering themselves. Do you think that you think that was his cocaine in the White House?
Yeah, me either. I don't think so. I I you know, unfortunately, I'm in a family that has a lot of addiction related issues, gambling, alcoholism, drug addiction, and he seemed pretty sober during that period of time. So, I don't I don't I don't know. I mean, who the hell knows? But it's just it's a weird outcome. But but uh
I I'll say this, you know, I've interviewed a lot of people on the show. People that are ultra successful, people that have, you know, that aren't as successful, people that, you know, have massive followings, people that are famous, people that aren't, like all walks of life. And Hunter to me personally came across as one of the most genuine people you know that I've come across in the show. Very genuine, very humble, very truthful, very honest. I mean, it takes a lot to admit, you know, talk about accountability, some of the stuff that he had to take accountability for.
That's the number one thing for recovery, Doug. You know that, right? You have to you have to you have to have that reckoning. You know what I mean? And as a former addict, like, you know, if I were addicted to a drug, I wouldn't just leave it, you know, in in the White House for someone to hopefully find, right? Yeah, I don't think it was his. I mean, I think he's a very, you know, honest and genuine person from what, you know, I've seen so far and just always rooting for him. But going back to you, like I think I put myself in your shoes and just the the constant beating down of self-confidence, self-esteem. It's like, okay, I've trying to get one step ahead, but now I got this problem. I'm trying to get another step ahead and I got three steps back. And a lot of people, Anthony, they like they that becomes so overwhelming and they don't know how to get out because they don't have the confidence. like what was that path like for you to start to slowly rebuild your self-confidence after it being beaten down so much in a short amount of time?
Such a great question and this is the weirdest answer, okay? But when when you ask me that question, the first thing that comes to mind are my children because I have five of them and my oldest at that time was 25. He's 34 today. And you I think you know the prominade out in Santa Monica, you know that open out outdoor shopping area. I'm walking with him in the prominade out in Los Angeles trying to rebuild myself and doing some media and things like that and he is like are you okay? And he says to me, hey are are things okay? And for the first time in my life, I'm saying to myself, 'Okay, I'm getting parented by my kid.' And he's trying to show me his love and his compassion, but he's also now, look at me, Doug. He's like worried about me. He's like trying to lift me up. Okay. And then I said to myself, 'Holy, I got to do this for my kids. I can't, you know, was I down, Doug?' I was down. Was I disconulate? Yes, I was. Did I have a little bit of a self-confidence crisis at the moment? I absolutely did. I'm not going to make it up and pretend, oh, I'm Mr. Invincible. No, I was eating broken glass and drinking diarrhea, Doug. Okay, but here's here's my son telling me, you okay, then? Okay, is there something I can do for you? And I looked at him and I said, you know, I'm going to be okay. And by the way, watch what I do with this? And it was in that moment that I said to myself, okay, I got to figure this out. what what are the steps I got to do? And I got to tell this story and this this guy passed away and I love this son of he was like one of my best friends and I actually even went to Israel with him and said cottish for his mother at the tomb of Rebecca and he was his name was Howard Bragman. I'm going to talk about him. Okay, he he died a few years ago of a blood leukemia but Howard Bragman was probably one of the highest pro profile crisis communication managers in LA. And somebody referred me to him. I went to go see him. It's actually on the same trip that I was seeing my son. And I said, 'Howard, I want to retain you for crisis management. I need your help.' And Howard says to me, 'No, no, you this this isn't a crisis, okay? This is an atomic bomb. Okay? You gota you got to leave.' He goes, 'You're a rich guy. Go buy yourself a villa in Tuscany. Why don't you leave the country for five years? You could return in 2022 and then we could talk about you.' And I laughed. They said, 'How I didn't I'm not trying to hire you for your advice. I'm hiring you for your rolodex. Give me Steven Coar's number. Give me Bill Maher's number. Give me Jimmy Kimmel's number. I'm going to go on the view.' He's like, 'You can't do that. That would be an unmitigated disaster for you and you absolutely cannot do that.' And he said something to me that you should really think about. He goes, 'You know, Stephen Cobear's got 30 comedy writers. You know how many comedy writers you have? You have no comedy writers.' Okay, but you got to think of this. I went against conventional wisdom and I loved Howard, by the way, and he was he was right because, you know, it was a oneofone situation where I had to thread the needle and I I faced the music on those shows, okay? And let me tell you something. When you're in politics and you get hit like that, and and Hunter knows this, okay? And if you did a a three-way call with me and Hunter, I guarantee he could identify with this. They twodimensionalize you, Doug. You're no longer a three-dimensional person with all of your character, the pluses and minuses of who you are. They want to dehumanize you and they want to two-dimensionalize you into some image. And so when people hear your name, they think, 'Oh, that's the dummy that got fired from the White House. Oh, that's the cokehead that there were pictures of him on his laptop.' You follow what I'm saying? And they want that frame like that because that's how they knock you out of the game intellectually, right? And here's Hunter blowing himself back up. He's going on your show and he's exposing his intellect. He's exposing his humanity. And something about Hunter, he's exposing his kindness because I've watched a lot of his interviews, okay? And he's he's also exposing his love for his family and his father, right? And that's what you got to do. And and all of a sudden, it's nine years later, Doug. We're still talking about my White House firing, but I'm now a threedimensional figure to people again, and people are looking at me and saying, 'Okay, yeah, that guy made a mistake, but you know what? He's bringing something to the table. I'm going to I'm going to invite him on my podcast, or I'm going to listen to him, or I may buy his book in the bookstore, you know, and that's the beauty of life, right? That's why you're doing this podcast, okay? You you are trying to help people get through, man.'
So, you and Scott Galloway hosted this podcast that I really enjoyed or this segment on talking about men's mental health and helping young men. And we can talk about that in a little bit. But first, the reason I bring that up is you know, you just mentioned your relationship with your with your son and how him asking you if you were going to be okay like really kind of sparked this thing for you. What did that kind of show you as far as how you've raised him as a dad for him to ask that to you?
Yeah. Well, yeah. No, they're compassionate, good kids. You know, my ex-wife did a good job mothering them. She's a great mom. And, you know, hopefully I've been a a good father, although I would say some of my public life has hurt my kids if I'm being honest. You know, I think I think, you know, and I don't want any of my kids live in my shadow. My 34 year old son has a great business. He's a very successful guy and sometimes when he gets pressed, it says Anthony Scaramucci's son. Okay, I'm not in love with that for him. I want I want to be AJ Scaramucci. His name is Alexander Joseph. I want to be AJ Scaramucci's father. I don't want to necessarily have him be my son. You see what I mean? I don't want to I want to overshadow him.
He bought the Pokemon card, right?
He did. He bought the Pokemon card. He bought a Joe Montana jersey. He is killing it in terms of the idea that he has and he's a really good executor of that business and he is somebody who I respect as a business leader and I want him to have his own space and his own measure of success. This is a big lesson to people out there. Because I have a lot of billionaire friends and I'm not a billionaire, but I have a lot of billionaires friends and I respect them and I'm all about, you know, I don't know Jeff Bezos, but I get an Amazon box seven times a day here. He's created a lot of value in society. If he wants to send himself into the space, God bless him. I'm all about unequal outcomes for people's output. But what I will say is I've caught some people that I know pretty well. And again, I don't know Jeff Bezos. This isn't about him, but I do know some billionaires that look at me. They've had a 45 degree angle. Their selfnarrative is, I've made no mistakes. I've gotten everything right. I got everything right from the age of six. I have no flaws. And this sanitization of their life, I think, is really bad for their kids because it creates this eclipse and it creates tremendous anxiety for their kids. And so, weirdly, my White House slammed to the mat. And everything I just described to you, I think has been beneficial to my relationship with my kids. I think I I've become more human to them. I have become more frail to them. I've also I think I've dropped some of my egoentrism and my arrogance. I think I've become more psychologically minded, which hopefully is making me a better father. And hopefully I've given them some space for their own failures. Whatever they might be, the message is clear. You can fail as long as it's not a health reason. Pick yourself up. Let's go.
So, you think gratitude, humility, kindness, compassion, those are the some of the biggest lessons you learned from public failure compared to like being super successful.
Well, kindness I learned from my grandmother that so I'm gonna I'm gonna I you know I believe I hope I would like to think that even before that big debacle that I lived through Doug I would hope that people think I was kind. And I will say this because you know the some of the times the your grandmother's cliches are true. Be careful on the way up. Be nice to the people on the way up because you're going to meet the same people on the way down. And one of the most gratifying things for me when I was getting my ass kicked, there was a code array of people that called me. Hey man, you've been very good to me. Can I help you? Hey, hello. Can you be, you know, I don't know if you know who Antonio Gracias is, but he is now on the Fords 400. He worked with me at Goldman Sachs. He's on the board of, he may not be on the board anymore, but he was on the board of both Tesla and SpaceX. and he's one of Elon Musk's closest friends and business advisors. And he called me and he was like, 'What do you need? You were great to me at Goldman. I worked for you. We got along great. What do you need? Do you need me to wire money into a fund? Do you need me to help you do this? Do you need to start another business?' And that's very gratifying, Doug. You know, so I think the kindness was there. I'd like to believe that. My grandmother was a maid and I see everybody equally and I want to treat everybody with great kindness. I think the gratitude was probably not in focus the way it should have been. Do if you met me before the debacle and you said to me mooch are you a grateful guy? Oh yeah I'm a grateful guy. You get your ass kicked and climb out of the bog you're way more grateful. You know the the you know I tease people today. I said, you know, maybe I'm just too short to see the glass anything other than half full. When I'm looking, the glass looks full to me. And there's a gratefulness to the survival of something like that. Does that make sense? I'm also I'm also grateful for my marriage. And do you know Ben Stiller?
I don't know him personally, but of course, yeah, I'm a huge fan of this. Yeah.
Okay. So, Ben Stiller and his wife go to war and they're now getting divorce. And so, they they filed for divorce. He's moved out of the house. They've got young kids and these guys are going to war. Okay. And COVID happens. And so now they look at each other and say, 'Oh, you know, we uh we how are we going to see the kids?' Because we can't, you know, we can't move the kids. Remember how fearful everybody was during COVID? So Christine Taylor, who married Ben Stiller in the year 2000, it's 2021. Let's move back into the house so that we can co-parent the kids. You sleep down the hall, I'll sleep over here. And when the co fiasco is over, we'll get the divorce and we'll finally get get rid of each other and each other's lives. As I move back in and they reconnect, Doug, and they don't get the divorce. They drop the divorce papers and they're sitting here six, seven, eight years out. Okay. Now, Ben has become a friend of mine. I don't even know how we met. We met over like Twitter, I think, direct messaged me on something. I responded and then we got together and I and I spent a good 20 minutes with Christine talking about this because I said, you know, you guys have a lot in common with me and dear because your public story of York reconnection and I have this story. And I said to Ben and Christine, 'Are you more grateful for your marriage now after the near disastrous, tragic, potential breakup?' And what do you think they said, Doug? Of course, you know, and so, yes, I think I'm way more grateful today in my life than I was prior to that debacle.
So, I think people they they have a failure like you had. I mean, yours was obviously different because it was so public, but they have a failure and they let that define them for the rest of their lives. You see this a lot with addiction, right? You see a lot of addicts, they have a hard time grappling with the years they wasted, the people that they hurt, etc. And that becomes their identity for the rest of their lives and therefore they stay stuck. Was there ever a moment for you where you felt like a complete failure? And if so, how did you, you know, escape that mindset to just see that as a chapter in your life?
Such a great, such a great question. And the answer is yes. I felt like a complete fail. Okay. I felt like flat Stanley. I felt like the steamroller hit me at 200 miles an hour and I was flat as a pancake and I was I was in a wow zone. I was in a wow zone. I'm like what the hell and what am I going to do? So I'm not going to BS you or your viewers or listeners and tell you oh no I'm Mr. Johnny Resilient. I was beating my chest like a rubber super ball. No, I was like, 'This is a disaster.' Holy. Now, one of the things I had to do, and if you fail publicly, you should really listen to me on this. Turn the notifications off on your social media. Look at me. Just turn it off, okay? And give it a break. And again, another cliche from your grandmother, what other people think of you is none of your business. And if you want to get in the right mindset, you have to stop thinking about what other people think of you. Because let me tell you something. I was Tony Soprano on the PTOAC. I was a Jersey Shore cast member. I was an imbecile. I was an ingrade. I was this. I was that. I was getting hit from every side. Bill her impersonated me on Saturday Night Live. When I ran into Lauren Michaels, the founder of Saturday Night Live at the Yankee game, I was like, really? I mean, you couldn't bring Brad Pitt or George Clooney as a guest to the show? you had to go with Bill her. I mean, really? And he laughed and he said, 'Do you want to come on the show?' And I not come on the show, let me first. Do you want to see the show? You want to come and sit in the audience? And I did. And the night I came, they were teasing the out of me, you know, and they were panning to me and I was red like a tomato. But I mean, that's it. You got to own it. But yes, I felt like and I felt like a failure. I'm not going to BS people.
And then what was that path like for you to not I mean outside of turning the not notifications off? Was there did you go to like therapy? Did you do any kind of like personal development work that helped you kind of separate that season from your identity?
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Yes. So, I have a good relationship with Tony Robbins. I think most of your viewers and listeners know who he is. He's a high rate name recognition, motivational coach, great just a great guy.
Dream podcast guest, by the way.
He's on your You've had him on?
No, I said he's a dream podcast. I actually was just in touch with his team a couple days ago about trying to get him on.
Okay. All right. Well, let let them know that I've done the podcast, you know, and I'll and I'll I'll text him. I'll tell him to come on. But but but Tony, let me tell you this story because you'll love this because it's about adversity, right? Tony had a business in 1999 and he was seeking investors and I was a 35 year old guy running a hedge fund and I met with him and me and my partner put money into his investment and he lost the money. The the the thing went belly up. I'm going to tell you what a great guy Tony Robbins is. Okay, that's adversity, right? The thing went belly up. Tony Robbins was like, 'Okay, I'm going to do everything I can to make you that money back, and if you want to come to my date with Destiny, you want to do this, you want to do that.' He he was like that type of a guy, okay? And it left a huge character impression on me. I wrote a book 10 years ago called Hopping Out of the Ra, Hopping Over the Rabbit Hole: How Entrepreneurs Turn Failure into Success, which actually a good primer from my White House failure. And Tony wrote the forward for me. And so now I'm flat on my back getting my ass kicked. And in the spirit of what I'm talking about reciprocal niceness, Tony calls me and he says, 'You know, you're going to get through this. Why don't you come down a date with Destiny? By the way, I'm reading about your divorce with your wife. I think you and Dearra light love each other still. Do you want to come down here and spend a weekend with me and Sage? I think I can help you with your marriage.' And I took Dearra with me to date with Destiny. And then Tony said to me, 'I got a I got a life coach who's worked for me for 25 years. You should hire him.' And I met with the life coach, dear dream of a life coach. And the life coach said to me, 'Your husband's pretty up.' That would be me. And so what I would like to do is I'd like to spend 30 days with him, one hour a day for the next 30 days. And if he's willing to do that, I bet you I can help you fix your marriage. and I bet you I can pull this thing together. So, was he a therapist? No, he's definely not a therapist because Tony doesn't believe in that. He's more of a prospective guy. We're not sitting there like Sigman Freud regressing on the couch about a childhood. We're talking about self-awareness, improvement. Frankly, a lot of things that Hunter I got to go listen to your interview with him, but a lot of things I've heard Hunter say on his interviews with other people. So, I did that for 30 days and then this life coach said to me, 'Okay, if your wife wants to get back together with you, you and her will submit to a 45day relationship course.' And she did it and we did it. And some of that was really painful, Doug. Okay. But when I came out of the other side of that, I think we had a better understanding of each other's needs and wants and what we wanted to do together and what our what our dreams were. and we, you know, we get along and we love each other and so that helped our marriage. So I always tell people if you don't discount therapy, life coaching, talking to a third party, you know, it's okay. It's it's it's it's we're social beings, you know. We're we're we're we're her animals. What are they going? We're pack animals. We got to we need each other, you know, and so don't don't be like stoic and oh, you know, and you know, when I when someone tells me therapy is BS or life got BS, BS, I'm like, oh man, I wish they wouldn't see it that way because it was very helpful to me.
What were some of the limiting beliefs you had to overcome that this life coach helped you with or Tony helped you with?
Such a great question. Okay, so I got to take a pause. I really want to give this the best answer I can give. I think I think I think there was in my mind a vulnerability to self honesty. And so there is no way I could be doing this podcast with you, Doug, in 2016. I don't think I was safe enough with my own personal identity and comfortable enough in my own skin to talk to you so openly about my flaws. I don't think I would have been able to do that. And I think what what this process was is like, hey, let it go. It's okay. It's okay. Here here's the things I'm good at. Here are the things I suck at. Here are the things I need to work on. And and then you know you have to have this unstinting belief that you can make yourself better that you can get to a higher plane of evolved human thinking you know and you can get away from the lower levels of thinking as a human being which are fear and envy and jealousy and all the primordial things that are in your brain. Can you transcend all those things to a higher level? And can you accept yourself? You know, God put you or the universe put you in your body with your skin color, your genetics. He gave me a whole different set of circumstances than you. Okay? And then I would say two more things if you don't mind me saying these. Have you heard of the word s?
S o n der. S O N D E R. Okay. Sonder is really the word of empathy. It's sort of a German word. So you and your family have your own life and your your own ecosystem. I have my own life. Trials and tribulations and ecosystem. If I brought you to New York City right now, we walk down Fifth Avenue. Every single person that we see has that depth. They have a relationship network. They have a family. Maybe they have somebody sick in the family, god forbid, or they have somebody doing well. And we all have it. And what s is is to not take the people that you're walking by lightly. Not take the people that you see. Say, 'Whoa, that person has their own life. They have their own things that are going on.' And all of a sudden, when you hear the word s, you can be empathic and you can be caring, right? And that's a big thing. Okay. The second word, and I always tell this word to my kids, is proninoia. Okay, what the hell is that? Okay, P R O N O I A. Okay, that is the opposite of paranoia. You can go look it up on your phone. The a pronoyak believes that the universe is bending towards them. Okay, the universe is with you. You're not paranoia. You're pronoyak. And and Doug, let me tell you something. You start thinking like that, you'll start manifesting really good things for yourself. And when you get a setback, you'd be like, 'Okay, that's a setback.' But you know what? There's a reason for that setback. I'm cool. Let's move around that setback. Maybe we'll see something on the horizon that's even better than today. And that took a while. That took a while for me to get there as well. But and we're wired, by the way, because we need to survive. We're wired as paranoia acts.
It's like stoicism almost, right?
Yeah. There's a big there's a big there's a big part of that. Yes, sir. You know, there's Marcus Aurelius. There's the great stoics, the great stoic thinking. The impermanence of life and accepting it in in momentto morte, right? This is an Aurelian concept. I'm gonna die, man. So you can either be fearing death or you can accept that that's part of the universal experience. A 100red billion people have lived. How fortunate are you to be one of those people with some level of consciousness and sensience? But you're only here impermanently. And the 5-year-old version of you, Doug, or the 5-year-old version of me is long gone. We're now dealing with the 62y old version of me. And I don't know your age, but you look a lot younger than me.
I'll be 39 in two week three weeks.
Right? That's what I'm saying. So you got 25 you got 25 years to go before you get to me. And so what I'm what I'm saying to you is the 39year-old version of you next year will be gone. And there's an there's the only thing we can embrace is the change, right? The change is the only unchangeable thing. And so therefore, when something bad's happening, take a deep breath. All states are impermanent. Let's get to the other side of the thing to the good stuff. Does any of this make sense or am I just talking out of my ass? You can tell me.
No, this all totally makes sense and I think it goes into something else I wanted to talk to you about in that all of this stemmed from, you know, I've heard you say and read that a lot of it has stemmed from ego for you, like you know, as far as the decisions you made. Your ego got you into trouble, right? And so, you know, I would love for you to expand on that a bit and then how you now prevent ego from getting in the way that you make decisions in life.
Okay? So, this is the big thing and I don't have a good answer to the last part of it. Okay? Because I do think we still do that. I I still catch myself, right? Because you know, you want to be the guy you wanna, you know, hey, you know, but you know, every time I have put my ego or my pride into a decision, I have gotten my dick blown off. Okay. Every time. And so the the whole thing about the White House was, oh, I grew up in a bluecollar family. I I went to a public high school. I went to
TUS and Harvard Law School. I ended up at Goldman Sachs. I built two successful hedge fund businesses. I've made some level of wealth where I could, you know, more or less financially independent. I can have a few nice things in my life. Ah, I'm going to get to work for the American president.
I got to take Well, you know, my mentor told me don't do it. You and Trump are very like oil and water. My wife told me don't do it. You and Trump are like oil and water. No, no. I got to put a round peg in a square hole because I'm gonna fly an Air Force One. I'm gonna, you know, be in the presidential motorcade. I'm going to be an assistant to the president of the United States. You know, I had what I call PTOIC fever. You know, you get infected with this disease where you think you're the man or maybe you're the woman, but it's mostly men and you're going to go change Washington and they're stupid in Washington, but not you. You're this, you know, self-assured, smug jerkoff entrepreneur and you're going to descend down Washington and you're going to change Washington. Haha, Doug. And you know what the thing about PTOIC fever is? You know what the big symptom is? You don't even know you have it. You don't even know you have it. And so that immune system of Washington ejected me like I was a James Bond villain coming out of the Aston Martin in the 1960s.
And I had to have a humble comeuppance and I had to reckon with that. Okay. But how do you prevent it in the future? I don't know the answer to that, Doug. I would love to tell you that I have some mental model that every time I look at something, oh, I get it right, but I still make mistakes and I can still get mad at something that I shouldn't be mad at. And I still, you know, or something happens in my family and I get, you know, bowled up when I'm like, wait a minute, why am I getting bowled up? You know, there's an expression in therapy or life coaching called the witness mind. Have you heard that?
Uhuh. Uh, I think so, but go on.
Okay. All right. So, let me try to explain it. Okay. So, something crazy is happening. And one of the thing that you should try to always do is get yourself in the witness mind. What does that mean? I'm now going to observe my behavior as if I'm Doug or I'm Tony Robbins or I'm, you know, John Smith. And then I'm going to now say to myself, okay, let me ask John Smith, am I handling this right? Okay. So now I've pulled myself out of the emotional drives of the situation and put myself in the witness mind. When I tell people try to do that before making massively big decisions, even investment decisions, relationship decisions, reaction decisions, you know, can you get yourself in the witness mind? Uh, it's hard to do. I'm not I'm not saying I've got a 100% batting average at doing it, but I'm better at it today than I've ever been.
All right. So, I got a a big question for you. So, you you've you've openly talked about um you know, how you haven't fully uh grasped how to deal with the ego moving forward? We're in a situation now where at least from what I've seen, there's not a real strong candidate in 2028. Um like what's kept you from entering the race given how much experience you have, you know, both from the business side of things? I mean now you know your role in politics, your connections, your money, like what's kept you from announcing a run in 2028.
Okay, so be my campaign adviser for a second. Okay, so what party could somebody like me run in? There's only two parties. So they've got a lockdown. They're in a total duopoly. You can't get a third party started. I'm telling you, they they've crushed that. So now there's only two parties. So which one should I run it?
I don't know. I mean, I guess off the top of my head, as I'm thinking, I mean, I know you're a strong capitalist, but you also have progressive values on on certain things, and you don't
