Guest: Anthony Scaramucci, Founder and Managing Partner of SkyBridge Capital and a prominent voice at the intersection of investing, politics, media, and entrepreneurship

In a nutshell: Anthony Scaramucci has taken one of the most public and fascinating journeys in finance over the past decade.

When I spoke to Anthony on November 1, 2016, he was running a highly successful investment firm, hosting a television show, and advising a presidential campaign.

Less than a year later, Anthony was fired from the White House, facing a divorce, and trying to stabilize a business struggling against intense political polarization.

On today’s show, Anthony shares what he’s learned about resilience, reinvention, humility, the value of human relationships, and what it takes to recover when life hits hard.

But Anthony is also looking far beyond the drama of his personal experiences and examining the structural problems he believes are fracturing America. His upcoming book, All the Wrong Moves, is a 35-year tour of the economy that explores three key policy decisions that Anthony believes have widened the wealth gap and driven the rise of populism. If political and business leaders don’t start to address these problems, Anthony warns that the social fabric of our country could continue to unravel.

.Anthony Scaramucci and I discuss:

  • Why relationships and karma might be your most valuable assets in business and life.
  • How inflation, stagnant wages, and the  K-shaped economy are shutting median earners out of the American dream and driving the rise of populism.
  • Should companies replacing people with AI be subject to a “Robot Tax”?
  • Why advisors need to “get off zero” with Bitcoin and start taking the long view on blockchain and digital assets.
  • The (totally hypothetical) Scaramucci Presidential Platform, which would end gerrymandering, reverse Citizens United, and slow government growth.
  • Anthony’s “exponential” optimism.

Anthony Scaramucci on “reframing the argument”:

“ I got unceremoniously fired. Divorce was filed. Missed the birth of my son. My business was hurting. I was lit up by every late night comedian. I was torched by most cable news pundits and most editorialists around the world. So you have to go from that moment to the rebuild. And you have to go from that moment to, how am I going to reframe the argument? How am I going to dust myself off and get back in the game?

“And so I worked on repairing my marriage. Worked on repairing the business. We rebuilt our conference business. The last 10 years have been humbling. The last 10 years have made me more psychologically minded, perhaps way more empathetic towards other people. And I think it’s also given me a perspective, and weirdly, it’s given me a platform to talk about these issues and entrepreneurship, but also other issues, political and otherwise. I’m not going to sit here and mince words. It was really rough. And I made some really bad decisions that you could sit around and regret. But here are three things I’d say quickly to your viewers and listeners:

“Number one, if you’re an entrepreneur or business owner or running a business, you probably made some mistakes. And so, forget those. You have to get up and you leave that millstone of regret behind you. I don’t kick myself in the pants in the morning and say, ‘Hey, I once got fired from the White House nine years ago.’ I’ve already moved on and forgiven myself, and you have to forgive yourself in the business world for mistakes.

“Second thing I would say to you is that the whole ballgame is relationships. It’s worth way more to me than money. It’s worth way more than me than owning another Bitcoin. When I got fired from the White House, the lesson of my life was, if you’re nice to people, if you’re trying to be helpful to people and you’re trying to create good karma and wins around you, a lot of people will come out of the woodwork to help you when bad things are happening to you.

“And it’s sort of like what your grandmother said to you: Be nice to the people on the way up the ladder, because you’re gonna meet those people on the way down. Do a good job and try to be helpful to people in a nonlinear way, because if you do that and bad times should come upon you, there’ll be a layer of people there to support you.”

Anthony Scaramucci on inflation and the working class:

“ My dad’s 1976 wages priced 40 years later, the same exact job on Long Island, adjusting for inflation, my dad’s purchasing power would’ve been down 26%. If I come to you and I say, ‘I have these assets, I just sold my business, I need you to keep me ahead of inflation.’ You know exactly what to do, but I have assets that I can give to you that you’ll put into a portfolio for me that will help me outpace inflation.

“Well, let’s say I don’t have any assets. Let’s say I am a crane operator on Long Island and you are paying me a dollar, and I put that dollar in a savings account. Well, guess what happened from January of 2020 on: the US dollar lost 28% of its value. So think like a laborer. You gave me a thousand dollars, I now have $720 of purchasing power. I cannot catch up and I don’t have the assets to come to your wealth management group to give me the proper advice to stay ahead of the game. And this doesn’t reflect well on me. Until I worked for Donald Trump in 2016, I didn’t see how glaring these disparities actually are because I frankly wasn’t trafficking in enough areas of the country that had exhibited this.”

Anthony Scaramucci on believing that “the world gets better”:

“We worry about things that don’t happen. Thomas Malthus said in 1798, ‘We’re going to run out of food.’ We made more technology to make more food than we ever thought was possible. Prior to GLP-1, we had more people dying of obesity than from starvation. You and I were told in the mid-80s, ‘We’re running out of oil.’ When are we going to run out of oil? ‘2010.’ OK, well, it’s 2026. GPS satellite technology, offshore drilling rigs, the improvement of air conditioning, the improvement of different energy efficiency techniques and cars and buildings and homes. We worry about a lot of the things that don’t come to pass. I think my message is a hopeful message that people need to relax and bet the future and be long-term in their investment orientation and not overly read into the media and get overly concerned about things that are going on short-term.”

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