there's parts of your life where there's these big question marks that I'm hoping you can answer for me okay but I want the full truth now I'm nervous scooter Braun is the man behind some of the biggest stars in the music industry and he built one of the most disruptive entertainment empires on the planet i've never really said this out loud until right now at this age I feel a lot of guilt because I worked with so many young artists and we were all kids moving so fast and we all wanted to succeed so bad and it wasn't until I was 40 years old doing some intense therapy that I realized I was so driven by the fear that I wouldn't be enough so let's go back as a kid growing up I wanted to prove that I could be more than the privilege I was born with and I created this character Scooter because I didn't think Scott could achieve these things that mask made me absolutely relentless faking it till I make it like I had no right convincing Justin and his mom to be on the first plane they had ever been on and meet me so what were they betting on my ignorance but it was also realizing that so much of insecurity drives us and makes us great like now that I'm here I can't fail because then everyone will see that I shouldn't be here so let's go for it and then had such extreme success the whole world thought I was crushing it but I had built this mask so big i didn't realize how far away I'd gotten from the sky so here I am the top of my game i wanted to kill myself i went to a very dark place and I broke down crying because I spent so much time trying to impress people who didn't love me instead of realizing how many people already did and I was so desperate to do the thing I had never done before what was that this has always blown my mind a little bit 53% of you that listen to this show regularly haven't yet subscribed to the show so could I ask you for a favor before we start if you like the show and you like what we do here and you want to support us the free simple way that you can do just that is by hitting the subscribe button and my commitment to you is if you do that then I'll do everything in my power me and my team to make sure that this show is better for you every single week we'll listen to your feedback we'll find the guests that you want me to speak to and we'll continue to do what we do thank you so much scooter when I look at your life and I look at the things you've achieved so much of it makes sense but then there's this these other parts of your life where there's these big question marks that I'm hoping you can answer for me and maybe the earliest question mark that remains in my head is what it is that drives you because from an exceedingly young age there was this dog in you there was something for me when I was going through the research it looked like a chip on your shoulder or something to prove to someone and so that's really where I wanted to start i want to understand your earliest context so I can understand the cauldron that scooter was shaped in and the way that that made the boy turned to a man big question but that's the um the starter right burning question in my head you know it's funny because you started by asking Scooter "What drives you?" And it took me a long time to figure out as an adult that it was actually Scott my real name that was the real driver and I I really created this guy scooter when I was an adult because I didn't think Scott could achieve these things so I almost like created a mask and it wasn't until I was 40 years old doing some intense therapy that I fell in love with my name again and realized the answer to your question which is part of it was shame of why with my family's background am I getting all this privilege my father's a refugee from Hungary my mother her dad died when she was 11 you know and her mother struggled to to raise them with family help in the Catskill Mountains my grandparents were Holocaust survivors and here I am first generation born in America and I wanted to prove that I could be more than the privilege I was born with and I so I had that chip on my shoulder i wanted to prove my value i wanted to prove I was worthy of this who's told you you had to no one i think you know as a kid growing up I read it that way because you know you're hearing the stories of the Holocaust and my dad every night before he put me and my brother to bed would say "Hey boys you're different you're special i hold you to a higher standard." Every night before we went to bed and we started to really believe him of like we need to hold ourselves to this higher standard we need to do more the idea of failing the idea of looking at my parents and and not achieving it that's what drove me and and years ago I was on a podcast probably 10 years ago i was doing a podcast with Complex with this guy Noah i watched it do you remember the baseball analogy i literally wrote it down in my notes well I will tell it again but I will tell you on your podcast the difference I hold today okay they asked me what it takes to be successful and I made up this analogy with baseball and I said "Imagine Sai Young award winner CC Svathia at the height of his career is in the middle of Yankee Stadium and they invite everyone to come hit a home run and they say you get as many at bats as you want and whoever hits the home run wins like the you know billion dollars million dollars whatever it is." And you can imagine everyone flies in from all around the world people are fulfilling for New York City the line is crazy and I said "The person who's successful is not only the person who finally gets up to the plate and swings and misses but stays at the plate." And now people are saying "Are you kidding me there's lines of millions of people waiting for their turn and you're going to stay there you're going to stay there and swing again and they swing again and then everyone's booing and they swing again and they literally keep swinging as everyone is booing them and booing them and booing them for hours they're the most selfish person in the world you don't deserve to be here get off that plate this is not." And then they finally hit that homer and everyone cheers cuz oh my god they did it and I said that years ago and it wasn't until recently that I realized there's one difference in the story i never understood who the crowd was i always thought the crowd was being able to shut out the outside noise i always thought the crowd was the naysayers and all the people in your life who will tell you you're never going to achieve anything and that's part of it but the crowd all those people waiting in line is actually you that's what I never realized till now that that's the difference i always thought when people asked me "What drove you?" I thought it was all the outside noise i thought it was the fear of failure the fear of letting them down all these different things and it wasn't until recently when I hit some hardships as an adult and really had to look inward that I realized everyone's got the same crowd and everyone has their own issues and everyone has their own stuff and what actually brings you to success and self-worth and happiness is actually understanding how to stand at that plate and shut out the noise that's here not the millions of people around the millions of people are in your head screaming at you telling you you're not enough the deep deep lie from the most confident people have it so I'm glad I get to finally publicly say the difference because I've had it wrong all these years and in that analogy you talk about how most people come up to the plate they swing once they leave they hear the boo they leave they go back to their sofa or wherever they're coming from some or or they swing two three times everyone's telling they're selfish and they get you know oh my god and they're embarrassed and they leave mhm it takes a lot for someone to stand there in the middle of the noise shut out the noise and understand the opportunity was given to me i deserve this i'm going to keep swinging going back to your early context Scott yeah your dad Irvin he sounds like quite a tough guy i was reading about some of the things he was saying to you when you were a kid and I was like "Dad Jesus." Like when he called you a liar that day and told you about living with integrity etc my dad grew up tough and it was almost like when you're being raised by two people who live through what they live through they were raising him for a world that took everything away from them they were so loving but they still raised him that way and then he was so loving but he still raised us really tough and I was the firstborn son so I'm the oldest of all our kid all the kids so he was very tough on me you're referencing this time when I was I was probably 14 and he uh he caught me in like a white lie and usually he would punish me and his punishments could be severe but this time he just said "Hey come here i want to talk to you." It's not going to be a punishment this time i just want you to know you got the gift for Gab you could talk your way out of anything and in life I used to tell you if you lie you're not going to be successful i want to tell you the truth you're so good at it you might be successful but you're going to be a liar and I'll know you're a liar and you'll know you're a liar so do that with what you want and I was so beaten down and ashamed because it wasn't like raining down fists on me it was just like the guy I admired so much called me a liar and I walked away i was messed up and I went back to him and I said "Dad I want you to know I'm I'm not going to lie i'm going to be a man of integrity i'm Yeah I could do that but I understand this opportunity what you're saying." And he just looked at me he said "Okay good." And he walked away and it was one of the best lessons ever you know cuz he was right like you you can win certain ways but you're going to know how do you how do you want to win you want to do it the right way and um and that that tough love I'm appreciative of it you go to college i went to college you went to college um you started a business at college doing events yeah well I I started selling fake IDs that's what I started first yeah yeah i sold fake IDs cuz my friend sold fake IDs and I thought he had a bad business plan so I was like I'll market them you make them um and and quickly uh he broke my golden rule of not keeping in touch with people we sold to so I stopped immediately because I didn't want to get caught and um I walked by a nightclub and said "How much would you give me if I brought people here the next week?" And that was the beginning of my Atlanta party promotion days why did that succeed what is it about you as you look back in hindsight your skill set your ability that made your party promotion days so successful which eventually sort of parlayed into music but a combination of things i think one uh I wasn't a threat to the freshman girls i had a high school sweetheart at the time i was very committed to her i was a decently cute kid and I could dance okay so I was a good person to go out with and have fun so uh that was one thing number two I was playing sports so I had a lot of friends in different you know teams and different arenas and three I was in the right place at the right time you know I uh that first party I threw was successful and at that first party I was approached by a guy named Jason Weaver he's an actor and he was in this old Michael Jackson movie I used to watch as a kid where he played young Michael and he came in and he said "This is crazy." Cuz Atlanta at that time was very segregated in the club scene so it was like if you were black you went to a party that you know a club that played hip-hop and if you were white you went to a club they played techno but I didn't grow up in the South and I wanted to listen to hip-hop and rock and roll and we played that and when Jason came in he was so fascinated to see a mixed crowd listening to hip-hop that he was like "You want to see how the other half lives?" And Jason brought me to a club called Velvet Room on Tuesday nights in Atlanta Georgia it was ran by a guy named Alex Giddawan alex was so fascinated to see me in the line he said "You know let this kid in here." And Alex taught me how to promote he taught me what the value of the door actually was what I should be getting from the bar and I would start moving my parties and I would spend all my money that I made on Thursday nights at the college party on Alex's Tuesday night meeting people meeting rappers meeting singers meeting different people faking it till I make it and getting people to come back and forth between my parties and that's how I started that's how I met Germaine that's how I met Luda that's we all kind of came up together relationships why did he give you a foot up so many people are early in their careers and they're having these chance encounters but those those aren't converting into a relationship and when I look at your life there's people you meet along the way who end up being really really pivotal and it appears to me as an objective observer that you have an ability to form good relationships loyal lasting relationships with people one I think it's important to pay people respect you know I came from a household where you respect your elders and when I was coming up I was 19 so I was very respectful of the people that giving me an opportunity and I never forgot who helped me along the way i think the other thing that was a big part of my philosophy was let your work be the reason they want to meet you i didn't want to be that kid who was going "Hey give me an opportunity." And by the way sometimes that works but I wanted them to see what I was doing and then say "Come over here." I didn't approach Germaine Dri to work at So Deaf germaine heard about me in my parties and he met me and he said "You have more potential than parties why don't you come work for me?" I didn't approach you know Ludicrous who was coming up as a rapper and say "Let me do that." I didn't a lot of people in my life i I never really approached them and then even as my life changed and I got older I made a lot of relationships and I have a lot of relationships now that I've never done business with and people go "Well you have that why don't you?" And it was because I never wanted anyone to feel probably my insecurities i never wanted anyone to feel like I needed them i never wanted to feel like a user it was like my own insecurities of how they might see me mhm but I think on top of that I just it was that same old thing of never wanting to be in a position where you're begging somebody for something i called Jermaine and we spoke to him and I listened to the recording again just before you arrived but what Jermaine said in that voice recording is also pretty similar to what your dad said which is they both saw something in you you're this young kid who doesn't have an extensive track record of decades of work but they're all betting on you in some way as you look back on your life what were they betting on cuz they all seem pretty sure that you had something my ignorance ignorance i think I think uh I No one told me I shouldn't be there and he offered you a job for working at his company which meant you had to drop out of college i didn't have to drop out of college i did because um I went to work for Germaine and now I'm traveling all the time i'm still throwing parties you know we're gearing up for Usher's album we're doing this we're doing that i'm working with the Young Bloodoods Anthony Hamilton like it's and I'm 19 20 years old and my grade point average went from a 3 point something to a 1 point something and they brought me in on academic probation and they said um you know what's going on with you is there a drug problem are you being abused and I said "No no no no i'm an entrepreneur i'm building this i want to build a record label i'm working for Jermaine Dupria." You know and this guy's looking at me like I'm insane and he's this dean looks at me at Emery and he says "Uh do you know the story of Robert Woodruff?" And I said "You know Robert Woodruff?" He goes "Yeah the founder of Coca-Cola the Woodruff Center the largest endowment in Emery." and he tells me this amazing story of this entrepreneur who created Coca-Cola who is the largest endowment at our university and I'm so hyped i'm like "This guy gets me he gets me he's going to help me i'm going to be at the school." And just when my hopes are really high he looks at me he goes "You know what we're going to do right cuz we're going to stop all the nonsense you're going to focus on school you're going to get a degree because the chance of you being like Robert Woodruff without an Emory degree is like one in a billion." And the moment he said it that's when I dropped out of school what did your father say before you ask me about my father I want to ask you a question okay you made a face and you paused because you have your own story of something happening like this i just have a a bias i just have a real hate for dream busters yet every great story we have of success people tell of that pivotal moment whether it be this dean or Michael Jordan being cut by his coach the varsity coach when he was younger we all talk about the dream buster as a catalyst to our success and you know in life I've I kind of feel like everything even you know it's like I have this tattoo amor fati you know from Marcus Aurelius it's the a concept love of one's fate in Latin and it's this concept that you have to love the sorrow as much as you love the joy you have to love the pain as much as you love the success you know it's if it wasn't for that Dean I wouldn't have had that chip on my shoulder in that moment i would just push you on the fact that like you hate these dream busters but I am so grateful for them i'm I'm grateful for the dream busters however and this is actually something I was talking to my friends about in our group chat this morning is it okay in your view to be driven by haters it's so funny because if you're only driven by haters no but I think that everything plays its role at the time like um Robert Green Mhm he talks about this idea of embracing your dark side and I think that there's truth in that like you know if if you continue to fight something that's naturally inside of you you're going to really struggle with it if you can accept that's part of you can use it as fuel and you can move right through it so yes there are things that drive me my curiosity is a big driver for for where I go my children now are a big driver for where I go and how I live my life the people I love the joy that I find the introspective voice that now I can go to when I'm meditating or you know working you on myself but doubt from someone who dislikes me or doubt from a hater i can pretend like I'm zen as much as I want but if I'm being really honest with myself sometimes that's the fuel that I need so I think if it's if it's solely one thing it's not healthy but I think if you can admit you get fuel and different influences from different places and don't try and be ashamed of the one that doesn't fit in your narrative of how evolved you are you know then it's okay you established SB Projects I believe after leaving Germaine when you were 24 25 years old 24 and I read that you'd kind of have had this plan to sign three different types of acts first one Asher Roth who's a very famous rapper yeah i wanted to sign three types of acts and Asher fit the mold for one Justin for the other and the other one I never found so Asher for people that don't know is a very successful rapper um what was the mold you were trying to fit eminem was a very big rappers one of the biggest rappers of all time and I was in college and I'm watching all like these at the time these frat guys but they loved hip-hop and I don't think they had anyone who spoke to their life so I wanted a kid who could speak to college life who had the skills to be credible within the world of hip-hop why did you think you could find talent what did you believe ignorance ignorance okay i'm telling you every aspect of my life if we talked about every little thing that I've been in you said earlier I've been in all these different things and probably your listeners have no idea what the hell I am so they're like what is he talking about but every time I put myself in that next arena it's this why not me i had no right contacting Asher on MySpace i mean at that point I could say okay I came from so deaf i was the youngest vice president music because of Germaine when I was at SOFE i was 20 years old so I had the right you know some credibility other people didn't have i definitely could do that but to tell him to drop out of college and move down to Atlanta Georgia for be the first artist on my record label to you know find Justin in Canada and convince his mom and him to be on the first plane they had ever been on to come down to Atlanta and meet me i mean it it was I was 25 years old 24 years old like these are I was insane like you know so interesting when we talk about belief we we ask if you know Scooter did you have belief but in your case you had the lack of limiting beliefs which shows up the same as having there was just like nothing it wasn't even because I was so driven by also the fear that I wouldn't be enough that back then I would have lied i would have said "Oh I had such a deep belief in my in my conviction that I could do it." It was partially that but it was also why not me and no one told me I can't be here and also now that I'm here I can't fail because then everyone will see that I shouldn't be here and so it was this this fear excitement fear excitement conviction that's why I always tell people when I meet them as young people I'm like "You don't have kids you can starve a little bit your parents want you to go the easiest route because they don't want to see you suffer but now is the time when you should be suffering if you want to go for it now's the time when you don't have anyone to support where you can really really go for it because later on in life you got to think about other people and back then 19 years old to 24 I'm Let's go for it and the second artist that you signed it's called Justin Bieber who's Justin Bieber justin Bieber you were 26 years old when you came across Justin 25 25 and he was 12 13 13 damn you discovered Justin by watching a a Soick video by Yeah well I saw a bunch of videos from his church his mom had posted and the one that moved me the most was So Sick by [Music] [Music] Neil and I sense you walked out the door it's the only way I hear your voice anymore you must have been asked this a gazillion times but the the actions you then took based on seeing a kid on on a video are bizarre [Laughter] they are bizarre yeah I like Googled uh the background of of the church to look up the businesses and then called the regions of Canada school boards to figure out where he was cuz his mom had a different name than him cuz her name was Mlette his was Bieber so I went a little crazy to find him within 24 hours once I saw him I kind of knew in person or No I knew when I saw online I was like "This is the kid I've been looking for." And I I felt the same way about Asher i mean I relentlessly kind of pursued both of them i had a clear vision to like what I could do and what he was capable of and it was funny cuz no one believed me i mean even after we met and we did the deal and we started working together literally no one believed me and YouTube was not a big thing back then so when I took him from 60,000 views and we took him to like 60 million now he's like one of the biggest YouTubers in the world and everyone's like "Yeah youtubers don't turn into musicians though." What were the first principles that you saw in him like what were the Cuz I when I think about having those moments where my intuition just says yes to something tone okay charisma um it was like he had incredible tone and he had soul and he had charisma he was doing like there was one where there was an instrumental and he was like jumping around and I just believed in him instantly and then when I met him he had even more charisma he was funny and I was like all right this kid let's go and he was an athlete so he was competitive he was a very special special talent and very unique individual and uh those were special times and you flew in to meet him and his mother no they flew to me oh okay i talked to her for like an hour and a half that night and uh first plane ride they ever went on and I remember he was so excited that there was a fridge inside his hotel room his mother said "Speaking of you Scooter really believed in Justin from day one he put everything on the line for us." And and they put it on the line for me too you know they believed in a 25year-old kid and uh we were able to achieve some amazing things and I'm very proud of what we achieved and always rooting for him how's your relationship with Justin now um not the same that it was i think you know these things go eb and flows i think there comes a point where I understand he probably wants to go on and and show that he can do it i mean we we worked together for so long and we had such extreme success and I think you get to a point as a as a man where you want to show the world you can do it on your own and uh I completely respect that and I think at this point that's what he's doing and myself and and everyone from the old team is rooting for him but I stopped managing two and a half years ago and now I'm I'm a cheerleader from the side and you know I I want everyone that I worked with to do well i think sometimes when you walk away from management I've heard managers which I never understood they'd be like deep down when behind closed doors they don't want to see them do as well without them is almost like you know them succeeding is is tarnishing your legacy mhm every artist that I worked with I believed in them because they were great and if they continue to be great I think that's the best testimony to that belief so to see Justin move forward and succeed to see Ariana you know with what's happened with Wicked in this past year um to see Tori Kelly you know to see everybody that I've ever had a chance to work with to see them go on and do great things on their own it's awesome is there anything that these individuals have in common at all these people that pain pain yeah I think it's pain personally I think um to be able to convey emotions on the level that it touches people around the world you have to understand emotions and I think um I think great artists great performers are able to draw from different places and sometimes it's joy and sometimes it's pain um and sometimes it's just a natural god-given gift how important is hard work oh it's very important i think especially in the beginning in the beginning you're stepping into a pool where everyone talented wants to be seen and you have to work incredibly hard to break out of the noise so and by the way I don't think that's particular to artists or music or film or TV or anything I've done with entertainment i think that's every business I've ever been a part of the first three to five years of any business I've ever built in any arena or worked with anyone who's ever achieved anything great those first three to five years are the most important sounds like something I said to my girlfriend [Music] um it sounds like you know same thing with relationship maybe put in the foundation those first three to five years and really be there together i I really believe that i think you put in that time in the beginning and you can break through the noise and set a foundation for everything else when I think about Justin's career he he had a a wobble um where he was involved in lots of sort of uh you know it looked like he was going through a bit of difficulty and I reflect on one of my friends Liam Payne and who was on this podcast and who's sadly passed away now but he also around the same age was thrown into the public eye at a very young age he joined One Direction went on the crazy crazy wild roller coaster ride that is One Direction and he admitted on the podcast that he struggled he struggled with addiction he struggled with lots of pain that he was dealing with and his story has is a an inspiring one ultimately but also a tragic one in many respects why does this happen to so many young artists childhood stars you know when you ask me this question at this age I feel a lot of guilt um I feel a lot of guilt because I worked with so many young artists and like I told you I hadn't taken the time to look at myself or um do the therapy myself until I was older so I didn't understand at 25 years old at 27 years old at 30 years old that they each were coming from very unique backgrounds of their own stuff with their own families and their own childhoods and growing up this way and being seen by the whole world and being judged by the whole world at a very young age and I think it's two things i think one human beings are not made to be worshiped i think we're made to serve and I think that when we worship human beings it changes something within us it it messes us up a little bit because that's not what we're built for and I think that can be very confusing and I think being able to transcend the childhood of you know people cheering your name and and everything else at that level and get to the place where the artists I've worked with are where they are in healthy relationships and and with their families and and still working through stuff but like having a human experience I think it's a testament to their strength so I think that's part of it i just think the nature of of being on that stage you know that young and people chanting your name and I didn't realize that till you know I got older the other side of it is I never understood even without me i didn't have that childhood yet i broke and what I think also is important is um I don't think we can push everything i think adversity is important we can't just talk about mental health and say adversity shouldn't exist but I do think I understand the importance now of of really putting in the time to make sure mental health is addressed and that we have an outlet to speak to someone outside of the crew um and there's a lot of things that I learned within myself that I wish I knew back then i met those One Direction kids when they started they came to LA and actually the whole group cuz Nyall reached out to me they came to my house to hang out in the backyard when they were first starting before they really blew up like their first US visit to LA and I met Liam back then and I met the excited young kid with the with the voice yet each one of them has had a different experience each one of them has had a different story of perseverance and tragedy um and that's the thing it's like with kids like you just never know what the cocktail is going to make of life um and I think I think you know that idea of we're not made to be woripped that can play funny things on the mind the brain isn't even developed until you're 25 they tell me so I don't even know if mine's developed at 43 but I've sat here with so many neuroscientists that have said that to me and it and also addiction scientists that say the brain is still learning and building it sort of like dopamine receptors and stuff so Liam was telling me that he he was up on stage in front of 100 odd thousand people in Dubai huge adrenaline rush huge surge of dopamine then they drive him back to his hotel and he was like they lock the door and it's just me in there with the mini bar and then the the next day it's the exact same thing stage car hotel and without the stage you were looking for that dopamine hit yeah no it's it's uh like I said it's I'm very proud of the job that we did and how much we cared and how much the team cared for all the years that we did it but it doesn't mean I don't look back and wish that I knew what I know now how would you have been different i think I would have had a therapist on the road for all of us like you know I think that's the biggest difference i think I would have slowed down all of us i think I made would have made every single one of us stop and do that hour you know because we were all kids and we were all moving so fast and we all wanted to succeed so bad and we all wanted the excitement and we wanted to make kids dreams come true and bring them down from the upper decks to put them in the front row and you know to help Justin get that number one and you know to help Ariana do this and we all wanted it and we we're excited and we were doing something that was so unique and everyone in the world was so excited for us you know oh my gosh you guys are a part of this this is so cool i didn't know I didn't know to go inward for the dopamine hit and I wish I would have known that and been able to share it back then when Justin ultimately said that he wanted to kind of go it alone and do it himself does that hurt no not at that point I think I was also at that point you know at at that point it had been a couple years where I knew I wanted to do something else and I I wanted to find out who I was i wanted to experiment with you know a different career and we were both communicating enough with each other everyone the writing was on the wall how many clients Oh god that we would know a lot cuz when I was doing my research I was like "No surely not." Karly Ray Jeepson and then um Martin Garrick's Kanye can you give me the top 10 off the top of your head that you worked i would never say a top 10 a good manager knows how to do that but I got I got to work with a lot of incredible artists a long time i mean from Zack Brown band to Black IPs to Justin to Ariana to you know Martin Garrick's we signed um while he was at Club Med with his parents we contacted him because he had the song Animals and we heard it um to Dan and Sheay to I mean just to so many over the years it was pretty incredible to be a part and so close to so many incredible stories you know and to see you know going to a coffee shop to see Tory Kelly sing to seeing her walk on a Grammy stage it just I got to see really incredible moments in people's lives to you know Demi telling me I want to sing the national anthem at the Super Bowl you know and showing me a tweet that she wrote this years ago to seeing her actually perform you know you know uh at the Super Bowl you know so it's it's just been a really cool experience but I got to see it in so many different arenas and and you're only there for a flash right you have this little tiny small moment here a little tiny small moment But to get to witness so many different rides it's a really cool thing and I remember as a kid I heard this great saying don't just read stories try to be a part of them try to be a story and I think I've always tried to take that into my life crazy crazy why i was I was there was a second ago when you were talking and I was just I stepped into your body for a second and I ran the highlight reel of your life just as Justin's um sort of manager and I was thinking God like the places you must have been and the things you must have seen just as his manager let alone working with all of these other great artists it's not just a lifetime of experience it's multiple lifetimes of fortune to get to even see those things i met a guy years ago and um I'll name drop here so I I got invited to meet Charlie Munger oh yeah the investor yeah and everyone was asking him questions about business and I asked him a question about life and afterwards his guy contacted me he goes "Charlie liked your question he wants you to meet this other guy that he really likes who's a brilliant businessman and I meet this other gentleman and he tells me he's a statistician by trade and the reason he's excited to meet me is cuz people in my world who are part of so many different stories live in dog ears because they get to be a part of kind of so many other people's things um but it's uh it's a unique thing but I told you it the biggest lesson I learned from all of it is that at one point in my life I received so much praise and then the next moment without me expecting it I received so much hate and on the other side of all these experiences I've come to learn that both were not deserved the people who were praising me did not know me and the people who hated me did not know me and it's like one of my favorite uh I saw Tom Hanks say this on like an actor's table one time he goes "This too shall pass." You remember that yeah yeah it's so great he's like "You think you're killing it this too shall pass." He's like "You think it's going to be hard this too shall pass." Like it's true so what do you anchor in then if so much is transient at this point in life generally what what does one anchor in if everything is transient if you know this two you don't have kids yet i have a major anchor and three kids major anchor what if you don't have kids if you don't have kids that's when you should definitely do the selfwork cuz your anchor's you and and the truth is I've really gotten to a beautiful place of I fully expect to be misunderstood in the future i expect tomorrow something can happen where especially because my life has been somewhat in the public eye you get misunderstood all the time people make up stories they twist things someone's hurt it comes out this way that way i could get pulled into this stuff it's happened to me already and so I've come to terms with that what I've realized is being on the other side of it already happening to me all it does is end up making room for something else so for me what anchors me is I no longer think I'm in control but I think I'm participating in one hell of a game i can't control the outcome i'm Steph Curry and LeBron could be at the height of their game but even they can't control the game they can influence it and so that for me it was like the first half of my life was I'm manifesting i'm manifesting i'm doing this that youthful energy and then you turn 40 and this stuff happens and you start the other half of your life you're like you know Michael Singer I need to surrender you know you had their surrender experiment you know like everything surrender and then I realized there's a balance there's this balance of I'm participating in an incredible game and I can bring what I bring to the table and I'm not going to be able to control this game but maybe I should start enjoying the game a little bit i'm out here i'm participating that's pretty freaking cool and I think that is what anchors me at this point that I have no idea what the next 5 to 10 years of my life are going to look like i used to think I did now I know it can change like that and I think I'm excited for love in the future i'm excited for adventure i'm not looking forward to the pain but I know if it comes there's a reason for it so tell me about a an artist that you believed in you don't have to name them of course but an artist you believed in you were wrong about something you really just your first principles were off and in hindsight I had an artist who was honestly maybe the most talented artist I ever signed his name was Spencer Lee and Spencer Lee got brought to me by a buddy of mine named Freddy uh and we did a deal for Spencer and Dave Appleton who I told you about my buddy was trying to handle in management and Dave started calling me saying "Hey there's some real addiction issues here and we're really struggling." And we put him into rehab and then he wrote one of the most incredible songs River Water river Water send away my worries please [Music] river take me down show me the dreams that I never [Music] found about addiction and when he got out we thought okay he's going to be clean and everything great we made this video and we started getting going we made the Spencer Lee Band and we started putting him out there like paying for everything to kind of get it going and he started doing festivals and we started getting phone calls of like hey people are coming to see this insane talent with this voice and he went uh back to drugs and um he overdosed last year and uh he's no longer with us and we got the news cuz his grandmother who's the sweetest she called to say thank you for trying and everything else and that was the love of her life and she lost him and um that one I got wrong because I thought you know maybe if we get the records right if we get the music if he gets on the road you know he gets out of rehab like you know this would be enough it's one of the biggest tragedies cuz I I can't tell you how good he was i mean he just a special special talent you listen to this guy's records sometimes I always say I want to like reach out to his family and be like let's just release the records like the ones that I have that the world's never heard and I you know I all the money should go to you know a cause you know to help people in a similar situation i wish we could do that i'd love to get permission to do that um cuz he was one of the most special talents I ever came across they don't want to release the records it's complicated last week I was in New York interviewing one of the world's leading addiction experts and if for anyone that hasn't been through addiction it's a very confusing thing to observe because as an onlooker you just go just stop that you're self-destructing but if you've had friends that have dealt with addiction you realize that it's not an attempt to self-destruct it's like an attempt to Yeah yeah it's like it's maybe the last attempt to do the opposite to survive to survive from something when I was dealing with addiction with someone I managed um someone I really respect told me about Alenon uh Alanon is for a support it's like AA but for the families and they recommend I go and I went to two Alanon meetings and it was very helpful at the time and one of the things I learned there was one this concept of it is not your fault you this is not about you that you have to love them where they're at you can you know but the biggest thing I really learned was be a rock you know like this person said to me home doesn't move around home is a constant place that someone can come back to if someone beats addiction it is because of them you know they've made that choice and they deserve the credit but if you want to be helpful this person said just try to be a constant place they know that no matter what at the end they can come back and they and you'll be waiting understanding your story you stuck around with Justin when he went through his his difficult times and people were calling for you to drop him and to maybe move on yeah I think it was an interesting time but like I said if someone beats that they deserve the credit so I don't I don't deserve any credit in that he does you ended up posting that post on your Instagram which sent a ton of headlines around the world saying that you were quitting music management 23 years after 23 years there was a little bit of a question mark though because I think you referenced in something you'd posted that part of your inspiration or a catalyst was a particular artist had decided that they wanted to go their own way who was that i prefer not to say like there's a bunch of legal stuff around that everything else but uh she uh she informed me and I respected the hell out of it that she was she felt that way and uh but I had had that conversation with others too and and um I wrote I mean I wrote it all in 23 years the reason I posted that at the time was I had already made the decision a year prior but I'd never talked about it and you know when you're running a big company there's all these you know legal things and we had to wait till everything was in order and then I could say it and um and they were like "Well you've already been out of it for a year why say it now?" And I just felt I need to say it for me but I also need to say it so I hold myself accountable not to ever go back okay and I you know it was way too long it was like 10 slides on Instagram no it was incredible but it was uh I appreciate you saying that but it was from the heart and I remember waking up posting it and then just like falling down because I was like "Oh my god like this thing I've been doing since I was 19 is now over." And what I wrote in there is the truth my entire adult life that's all I had known so not being in that situation I didn't know what a normal adult life was like i didn't know you could have a weekend like I didn't know you know like that's what it was i was on call all the time for 23 years and it wasn't one it was a lot and um finding out what a normal adult life was like was pretty wild to me and also really interesting but I don't I had some of the most incredible memories and I'm very grateful but if you remember do you remember the Barry Gordy quote at the end no I don't barry Gordy is the founder of Mottown Records barry Gordy is a kid from Detroit michael Jackson's theater play barry Gordy correct yes so before Barry Gordy black musicians would make incredible music and a white person could come along and just cover it and make it theirs and Barry Gordy took that back and gave us Mottown Records and changed the entire music industry and I was at a dinner and Barry Gordy was placed next to me and I was just like freaking out barry Gordy sit next to me and we start talking and this is years before he said "I'm going to tell you a story and you're going to need it one day." And boy was he right and he said "You know do you know what the Mottown 25 was?" And I said "Absolutely it was the first time Michael Jackson did the Moonwalk Diana Ross." And he's like "Oh you really are a Mottown fan." I was like "Yeah." And he said "Well do you know I didn't want to go?" I said "What?" He goes "Yeah I didn't want to go." At the time Michael had left for CBS records diana had left for CBS records and everyone was saying that I took their publishing and I was like the bad guy for all these people that I had supported and lifted and like I was so angry and I didn't want to go i said "What changed?" He goes "My family made me go." And I said "Yeah cuz I remember you were in the balcony and I kept cutting to you." And he goes "You know the first I get there and Diana Ross is hosting michael's going to perform he's the biggest thing in the world i'm I'm mad." But as the night went on I suddenly realized little Barry from Detroit would have lost his mind knowing this was coming he said "Young man it will never end the way you want it to but it doesn't mean it didn't happen." And I didn't know how much I needed that in the years to come you can plan it you can try and control it as much as you want but Barry God was right it will never end the way you wanted unless you're Derek Jeter on the Yankees but or you know you're messy but um but most of us it's not going to end the way we wanted however it happened and how cool is that like how cool is that that like we get to do this and get to have this life and I thought that's the way I wanted to end 23 years because the me stopping managing and ending managing and it didn't end the way I necessarily wanted i would have wanted a giant concert where all the artists come out we celebrate everything we did together and ended pretty abruptly of like "Oh this is it." And some want to leave and some want to stay and yeah I'm done i don't want to do this anymore and some people understood it and other people didn't but it happened and no one could ever take that away did you ever feel betrayed oh of course but I'm sure that goes both ways like as much as I felt betrayed like music business can be heartbreaking management can be heartbreaking if you watch David Geffin's documentary he says uh management is like move the mountain over here and they say it was supposed to be there you know but like but at the same time it must be heartbreaking the other way it's such an interdependent relationship and it's such I don't I you know the people always say stay on your side of the street i try to do that it's easier for me to move on with my life and be happy by staying on my side of the street so yeah I've definitely felt betrayed a hundred times i've definitely felt misunderstood so many times but I also try to give empathy of if someone is doing this to me they must be hurting for some reason and maybe I did play a role in it even if I don't know I did you know so do you feel betrayed yes especially in a job of service yeah but yeah you're right we all do have a preconception of how how the run will end man we're all the protagonists in our own story now that there's been some space between that decision yeah 2 and a half years 2 and 1/2 years since that decision wow 2 and 1/2 years wow it feels like it was 6 months ago well it was 2 and 1/2 years for me okay it's been probably a year and a half since I probably posted that okay you've had some space since that decision correct decision yeah oh yeah even high conviction now that it was the right thing yeah and like I said it happened in hindsight it was what it was supposed to be at the time it was supposed to be i think the reason why I wrote 23 years and why I quit I wouldn't say I quit when I retired and stopped doing that when I moved on how about that when I moved on to something else was because what exactly what I wrote it was I was too afraid to find out who I was without it for so long that I probably should have left earlier but I finally got to a point where I realized either you do it now or something you're going to have to learn the hard way again you know so it was time and it was time for some of the most amazing artists that I worked with to also spread their wings and do their own thing i think B2B marketeers keep making this mistake they're chasing volume instead of quality and when you try to be seen by more people instead of the right people all you're doing is making noise but that noise rarely shifts the needle and it's often quite expensive and I know as there was a time in my career where I kept making this mistake that many of you will be making it too eventually I started posting ads on our show sponsors platform LinkedIn and that's when things started to change i put that change down to a few critical things one of them being that LinkedIn was then and still is today the platform where decision makers go to not only to think and learn but also to buy and when you market your business there you're putting it right in front of people who actually have the power to say yes and you can target them by job title industry and company size it's simply a sharper way to spend your marketing budget and if you haven't tried it how about this give LinkedIn ads a try and I'm going to give you a $100 ad credit to get you started if you visit linkedin.com/dary you can claim that right now that's linkedin.com/diary you sold your company for $1.1 billion that's what I read you can't confirm or deny but that's publicly traded so I can confirm but I don't like talking about it okay you sold your company for $1.1 billion which I don't think people realize it's a [ __ ] lot of money um at 39 years old roughly I was about to turn 40 you talk about laying on the beach with your belly out yeah i mean with a significant amount of money in your bank account without the same job that's sort of demanding your time seven days a week a lot of people are scared of that lot not not the money but the gap the uncertainty the space honestly the timing of when it happened for me I was in such a place like I said of surrender that I really wasn't looking at it as like achievement or money or something like that i more looked at it as what are you going to do now are you going to try and control are you going to participate like I told you earlier and I started to just be curious for the first time instead of I love this idea of a competitive mind versus cur a curious and creative mind mhm a competitive mind is what I had and it is where I was of there's always something finite when you're competitive you know it's going to finish there's going to be an outcome and then what but when you're operating from a curious and creative mind there's no end you can just continue to create you continue to build and I want I want to be in that place in my life now of what how big can I think i saw this Jeff Bezos interview the other day and he just said one of the biggest curses of an entrepreneur is not thinking big enough you know and I think you know think big you know you only get one ride around this thing think big have fun love your friends love your family dance laugh cry you know do all the things and get to know yourself more and more every single day just before that time we have this whole Taylor Swift incident what happened is this the moment you're talking about where you received Bad Press oh Bad Press yeah yeah that was That's the When I bought Big Machine I thought I was going to work with all the artists on Big Machine i thought it was going to be like an exciting thing i knew that Taylor she and I had only met three times I think in my life three or four times and one of the times it was years earlier it was really a great engagement she invited me to private party and we we we respected each other we had a great engagement in between that time since I'd seen her last I started managing Kanye West i managed Justin Bieber i knew she didn't get along with them i had a feeling this is where my arrogance came in i had a feeling she probably didn't like me because I managed them but I thought that once this announcement happened she would talk to me see who I am and we would work together and the announcement came out and I'm calling Scott Borchetta and saying "Hey send me her number i'm I just talked to Thomas Rhett and he's excited and I just talked to you know uh this you know this person and they're excited and I'm calling you know Florida Georgia line next and oh and then this Tumblr comes out and it says all this stuff and I was just like shocked." Um and it's it's been five six years i don't need to go back into it but what I can tell you is everything in life is a gift having that experience allows me to have empathy for the people I worked with who I would always say "Yeah I understand." But I never knew what it was like to be on the global stage like that i never knew what criticism like that felt like and like I told you the biggest gift that I got from that was understanding that all the praise I had received up until that moment was not deserved and all the hate I got after that moment was not deserved because none of these people knew me she didn't know me this person didn't know me this person who met me three times they didn't know me i can show respect for all of them cuz I don't know them so I can love them where they're at but the gift of pain was awareness and the other part I was going through very something very personal shortly after I was going through the divorce my marriage and all these different things and it just felt like one after another but I look back at those didn't things didn't happen i I really think they're all gifts cuz when when something's fair you don't respect it when something happens to you that you feel is fair you're just like "Oh I I I deserve that." And you move on you feel justified because you saw it coming when something happens to you that feels deeply unfair and you can't fix it then you really got to look at everything and realize the role you played in this or maybe this or that or who do you want to be or how so I'm grateful but how does one contend with an unfair world and I use the word unfair as well because you know we've got investigative re researchers here who looked through everything relating to that particular deal and then we also looked at what's written on the internet and there's this great disparity between what actually happened and what people say happened and there's actually I think there's a documentary out there which goes into it in great detail which Andrew Schultz was talking talking about on a podcast which I saw so I looked at that documentary as well i mean look I'm grateful for a couple things one my kids were really young when it happened so they didn't feel it as much it was very hard at the time it was hard on the marriage it was hard on our family you also threats yeah but I also don't know what was being said on the other side you know cuz I never got to have the conversation you know so I think when people aren't communicating and refusing to communicate a lot of things can get misconstrued and you you know I don't want to hold any hatred or like I we everyone moves on you know so yes I appreciate you saying that i appreciate you actually doing the research but for me I choose to see it as a gift i choose to see it as being able to have a perspective that very few people in the world have knowing what that's like of feeling that on a global level pain yeah and also just what does that mean in reality when you It just felt unfair it felt like and but so much but of course of course it happened to me right of course because here I was thinking my value was from all this praise you know and I and everything was me making sure that I was living up to it and then this happens and it's unfair and I can't control it and of course the universe was like screaming at me like God's screaming at me like hey wake up you're not in control you can't navigate all of this you don't get to decide what your legacy is and you you just get to decide who you are on a daily basis and who you choose to see in yourself and how you treat the people that love you and the people you can actually interact with surrender but surrender and participate you know that's the big thing for me it's more than just surrender it's surrender and participate and just enjoy the ride that's why I got the tattoo you know it was I can't worry about everyone's niece being mad at me you know like you know it it's what I got to do is is show up for my niece you know and I got to show up for my friends and my family and I wish everyone involved across the board whether I know them or not nothing but good wishes when I say specifically that pain people don't like think about how many people on earth have experienced such a thing and if you if I could be a fly on the wall that is actually just has CCTV for eyes and I was watching you at that moment in time just for seven days I got to watch Scooter what would I have seen like I said at that point I hadn't really done the work okay um so resistance resistance trying to navigate it trying to understand it trying to um figure out how to fix it and then I couldn't but then I did financially like I couldn't fix the relationship that I didn't have but then I was able to figure out okay you know what we will sell it you know in a in a world of streaming re-records will only help the old catalog as much as they help the new catalog both will get a bump i presented that I showed you know how everyone can be a winner here and I was able to sell the catalog and I don't want to go into too much detail but I but I offered it it's now come out very factually that I did offer it there's evidence of that multiple times in that process they said no i sold to someone else and I washed my hands of it and moved on and I actually sometimes look back to that and I go the universe was trying to teach me something and I navigated out of it i found a way out so then the universe went "Oh man we tried to tried to give you a warning sign we tried to like you're you're sailing by in the Titanic and we're waving like iceberg." And then the universe said "Okay you really didn't pay attention and you still aren't doing the work marriage." Cuz that one got me that one got me to pay attention losing my kids 50% of the time that one changed everything and the world that still couldn't move me i was still able to figure out the chessboard but my kids and my marriage that one rocked me and woke me up what's really crazy is when I told you I did this Hoffman process I won't tell you the process because you're not supposed to but I can tell you at the end of the week can you give it context for anyone that doesn't know the the Hoffman process is is one week no phone no email um intense work on your early childhood to understand why you are the way you are and give you tools to go out in the world and understand yourself the reason I went October of 2020 my marriage was falling apart the whole world thought I was crushing it ariana's crushing it this Justin's cr all these people like we're on fire and I had a suicidal thought for 20 minutes where I was like if my marriage is going to fall apart I'm not going to be with my kids all the time i can't control this i'm not going to be this perfect image that I've presented to the world and if I can't be this perfect image I don't want to be here and it went to a very dark place and after 20 minutes I said "What the hell was that that's not me i would never leave my kids i don't want to like leave anybody like what was that and the next morning I was on the set of a video shoot and a friend of mine called and he said you know what's going on with you and I told him I told him about that night before he called me back with another friend and they said you need to go to Hoffman we did it it changed our life they told me that they could get me in in two weeks cuz there was a cancellation October 24th and that was the release of Ariana Grande's Dangerous Woman album it was the busiest week of the year for me at work and I started laughing in the parking lot of this video shoot and she goes "Do you want us to pick another week?" I said "No." I said "I've spent my whole life pursuing these things doing this choosing this choosing scooter choosing that life choosing the clients and I'm the top of my game yet I wanted to kill myself last night something's got to change." And I chose to go to that place instead and the hard stuff actually came after I got out of Hoffman you know I ended up going through a divorce i ended up going through all this different stuff but I never was depressed again and the most interesting thing that happened on the other side of it is six years ago I was biggest manager and the perfect marriage and you know everything I touch turned to gold and there was no negative press about me ever six years later I'm divorced i don't manage anymore i've had negative press and I couldn't be happier it doesn't mean it doesn't eb and flow but I get to be the dad I've always wanted to be and the friend I've always wanted to be and it doesn't mean that things aren't going to go you know be hard and I'm going to say suffer more things and go through them but I'm in a place that I understand a morati it's like everything is a gift and I'm being super long- winded but that's the story that phone call the day after that to your friends did you tell him the truth on the phone the full truth yeah I did and what was that full truth that I had the night before thought about you know just shutting it all off it wasn't even an idea that I wanted to die i just wanted the noise in my head to go away i wanted the failure the disappointment the fear i was going to fail in my mind i couldn't control it i'd always been able to navigate out of failure and head towards success a pit stop but I had left what I found at Hoffman i told you is my name the inner child the Scott i had built this mask so big i wanted to feel like me again and I didn't realize how far away I'd gotten from that building up this armor building up the mask you know I I want to tell you something funny i usually don't say names in these things but I want to give him credit cuz I think it's hilarious michael Rapino is the CEO of Live Nation he's an amazing guy i think he's one of the most impressive people in the entire entertainment industry because he wields so much power but he also empowers other people so well and after the divorce after you know the big machine and and stuff that happened with that all these different things and you know what Michael told me he goes "I like you a lot more now cuz you seem human." you know and he told me he was like "Before," he's like "Nobody goes on like it's like this." He's like you know I just didn't he goes he goes "I didn't think you were real i thought you were full of shit." And he was right i mean it I didn't know myself cuz I had no reason to do so and it wasn't until I had some real hardships and real pain and real scares and real rock bottom moments that I started looking at myself and started figuring out who I was and then everyone got to know me my best friends since I was 11 years old they're the people I hang out with the most um two of them live out here Mike and V and I hang out with them all the time and people who know me they know these guys because they've been my friends since we were 12 years old 11 years old and Mike and Vuke told me at 40 years old when I was doing this work "We've known you since you were 11 and this is the most we've ever known you." And I'm not surprised or insulted because they say you haven't changed but we didn't know you because I was always even to them presenting what I thought they needed me to be perfect and then I broke and then I said this happened and this happened when I was a kid this was going on and this was and they were like we love you and I really became one of the boys for the first time in my life i became one of the boys because the boys became vulnerable i thought it was the opposite my whole life i thought you had to be cool you had to be tough to be one of the boys and it was funny because they didn't all the achievements not only did they not give a [ __ ] about I probably lost touch with them more so and when everything fell apart they were the ones that were there the ones who knew Scott the ones who didn't care about any of it and I've never really even said that out loud to this extent until right now and I'm actually glad I get to say on here both their names because they damn they picked me up and in a really really tough time and a time where I couldn't even look at my own brothers cuz I was too ashamed and um and I never felt like one of the guys like I felt like I had those friends but I just couldn't let them all the way in because I felt well maybe I'm smarter maybe I'm this maybe I need to be perfect and it wasn't until I really hit rock bottom that I realized that they always had my back and I'd made all these stupid ideas in my head and they were they were there and they weren't there for Scooter you know they were there for Scott and I see you getting a little emotional too because you probably have the same type of friends so I'll I did it so you can do it too what are their names well Michael Ash Dom Anthony and Oliver but they are they're the constant they're the they're there through everything the up the down the up the down the up the down again and they don't give a crap about any of this [ __ ] about anything in fact if your friends are like mine they're brutal about this stuff my friends rip me like if people saw the text messages between us they would think we hate each other um but we love each other deeply and and the best part about the messages is the random "Hey guys I love you." You know i It happens all the time i'll get a phone call I'll pick up I'll just see Paul hey brother I love you just want to call and tell you i'm really grateful like I have so many different people I can name and what was really interesting is before all this happened I don't know if you can relate to this but I spent so much time trying to impress people who didn't want to love me instead of realizing how many people already did i was just thinking what a great shame it is that the amount of units of energy we exert on as you said like the external like the audience whereas when you ask me who would be there for me irrespective of what was going on in my life I can name them and then I ask myself how much energy and effort am I putting into these relationships and I'm embarrassed about how much energy and effort I'm putting into these relationships I'm like embarrassed by it and they'll still be there yeah they don't care yeah yeah and and that's the best part because when you do start putting your energy it becomes even more fun it's really it's really um it's really difficult for me to understand and this is my naivity the part that's difficult for me to understand is you family meant so much to you didn't don't you have a tattoo that says family first one I was 18 you got a tattoo at 18 about your future family correct so family has been this like dream and ambition of yours mhm so it's surprising to me as someone who was naive in this context that some it had to be threatened for you to care enough to No I cared i just uh childhood trauma is a hell of a thing man it's um and we all have it that was the thing the reason I didn't think I had it is because I had friends who you know had parents who were alcoholics i had friends who had parents who this so I always thought you know both my parents are here they love me like the stuff I dealt with that's not real you know I come from an immigrant family like we can deal with this like we're strong you know that's not real and what I realized is everyone has trauma that's the human experience and the faster we value our own trauma and stop trying to downplay it because we don't think it equals someone else's the more we can work on ourselves because all you get to do is work on yourself you don't get to work on the other person like you can really only work on yourself you can help the other person but the work that's only here and I think that I saw my life as perfect so why change anything and that's why you're smiling stop calling me out yeah you're smiling so true because you see your life as perfect and screaming at you she's screaming at you and trying to and you can't see it she's not screaming just yet she is in her own way increasingly expressing to me and Yeah in her own way that there is an issue and I I'm going to be completely honest because this is why I started this podcast was the diary of a CEO so this is what would be written in my diary the alarm is getting louder and I'm still in a a state where I think I've got a a lot of time before the alarm is so loud that I can't fix it i got you i see you buddy trust me i see and here's the funny thing i don't want to go into detail cuz I have a lot of respect we're family forever it goes both ways it's not like there was one thing happen it both people have to play a role in where we got to you know things happen on you know both ways however Chris Rock says something really special he goes "Relationships are actually quite easy you know you ever try to pick up a couch with two people no problem pick up a couch by yourself." And that was the thing we we both went to pick up the couch at different times and we were made to be amazing co-parents we were made to come into each other's lives to help each other be better in different ways through the heartbreak of our relationship ending and we were we were brought together to make three incredible souls and now whoever gets me next is in for a treat cuz I'm a better version than I was before and in hindsight what are those warning signs for someone like me who might be the choices that you make that you justify oh I got to do this because you know if I don't do this one it could all fall apart no it isn't oh God you know I if I don't if I don't stop everything I'm doing and choose this it could all fall apart or yeah okay you're saying this to me but you don't really mean it because you don't understand what I'm going through because I'm in this grind and I'm in this hunt that you no one can understand cuz only I can achieve this you're smiling cuz you live it can I ask you some questions sure how long have you guys been together uh 6 years now and why are you smiling so big cuz how many times have you made those choices i know i just justified [ __ ] and there's always going to I know logically there's always going to be something else there's always there's never going to be a perfect time so I know logically that I have to pick imperfect moments and do you guys want kids yes do you use that as an excuse well the kids aren't here yet so I need to grind now i've I've I've certainly thought it as a way to justify to myself to self-rationalize i don't think I've ever said that to her but I have said to her I've said internally yeah I've said it to myself internally i've said to myself like this season of life up until I'm 35 I'm going to go for it and then if I'm good and then you know she's looking at you thinking I want to be able to trust you to have children yeah yeah listen a long time ago someone really smart ran this little exercise with me and I wish I would have paid better attention to it other than just thinking it was a cool saying to like use in the office he said "If I told you someone you loved was sick and you had a billion dollars how much of it would you spend to save them?" A billion dollars yeah correct and he says "Is your loved one is she healthy does she love you is she here with you right now everything you're working to achieve with that perspective you already have it." Yeah and they said it to me and it sounds great and I'm seeing it on your face you're a smart guy it's logical you're like "Yeah I get it." And then you're going to go repeat the same stuff because that's what we do and what I realized when I went and did this work was it's not going to change between you and her or me and my ex you know that wasn't what it was about it was actually something deeper deeper underlying that had nothing to do with the current relationship it had to do with that lie that I'm not enough that this person actually doesn't really love me unless I do this were you happy before the marriage fell apart i think so but I also didn't know who I was i think I was happy because everyone in the world told me I was doing great and I thought that that was enough and I I feel like looking back now I feel like I was asleep at the wheel i feel like I didn't know myself at the time and but I had so much success at such a young age so everyone was telling me I was doing great so I just chose to believe them and it wasn't until I you know the foundation broke and there was nothing underneath it that I was like "Oh [ __ ] I'm actually not happy." And I never knew and it's like I wouldn't go back to that before all the crap in a million years i want to stay here cuz now I'm like I'm I'm awake what is the um the practical advice you would give me because you can identify where I'm at in your own story so what is the practical advice you'd give me now to avoid myself getting into a situation where one day I have regret because I didn't listen to the alarm couple things okay number one turn the cameras off and go do some selfwork stop being nudged just go do it stop being with all due respect a [ __ ] okay i appreciate it and um and my group chat yeah yeah i mean it it's just there's no good time in the future there's no when I get to 35 when I get to 36 when I get to 40 there's when I achieve this go do it one to two weeks out of the year will not kill you it will only make you stronger because what you're dealing with with what you're telling me has nothing to do with the two of you it has more to do with your stuff and she has to go do her stuff you have to see if she wants to go do the same thing and and work on herself in the same way cuz it's a constant thing the second thing is go on vacations together and when the kids come go on vacate that's something I think we we forgot to do we did the vacations with the kids we did the vacations with friends but we didn't do vacations together because we were so we had three kids in 5 years and I think um you know that's something I think about but then also just trust that like if it's supposed to be it's supposed to be my journey was supposed to be exactly the way it was even the when I found out things and she found out like about ourselves it was exactly when we were supposed to find out so I just I'm a firm believer you know you're here to learn exactly what you're supposed to learn have you read Many Lives Many Masters no by Brian Weiss no easy quick read on a weekend you'll enjoy the hell of it um Brian Weiss was the head of psychology at University of Miami and he was recommended a nurse from the hospital would he see her and he saw her and she had deep trauma and couldn't figure it out so he goes "We're going to do hypnotic regression." She does hypnotic regression she goes into something from like age 0 to six that she couldn't remember very traumatizing he's like "Oh this will make a difference." She comes back the next week it's even worse that makes no sense to him he does hypnotic regression again and she goes into a past life he calls [ __ ] he does another hypnotic regression she goes into another past life and he realizes her educational background could not know the things that she's saying that he's looking up so what happens is he just writes a book about this patient and how she changed his entire practice and what was really interesting about it is it made me look at death differently and life differently we're here to learn and then if we don't figure it out we leave and we come back again and if we learn that one we come back and it's transitions and but it's never it's not ending it's all about coming here to learn but I feel like I have so much to learn and at least I know that and I'm such a mess and I'm figuring it out every single day that if Brian Weiss's book is right I'm not going anywhere for a while but it's a really amazing way to look and what was interesting is when I told my mom had read it when I told my dad he actually goes "Well you know we're Jews we don't believe in reincarnation." And when I started studying Cabala I realized that actually Cabala teaches reincarnation almost the exact same way this woman was describing it which means Judeo-Christians actually believe in reincarnation but many of us don't know it um and it was just a really interesting way of looking at life do you believe in reincarnation i do you do yeah I do especially reading this book and then studying Cabala and I started studying Cabala about a year ago um I like some of the principles I've learned from Cabala about this idea of being a custodian that nothing is actually ours but we're custodians you know that um God Hashem is what they say in Cabala but um this idea that we're supposed to give 10% to charity but no more than 20 you know because the belief if God is giving you this he's asking you to hold on to it because he has a purpose for you but if he chooses to take it away you should be just as joyful because it was never yours in the first place you are a custodian and I think that's a really great way of looking at materials looking at life and understanding like I said participating and I'm getting to play in this game but you have your moments right yeah still today because you're someone that's done so much work so it's it's interesting speaking to you because you're someone that I would seek advice on in everything in my life but you still have work left to do you said there I still have things left to learn well I think I have a lot of things left to learn i find myself sometimes needing to defend myself sometimes not defending myself when I should i feel like sometimes I feel misunderstood or not loved and you I I've you know had that moment and then even on the other side there's times where you feel like oh you're doing all this work and people see you as someone who's done the work and then you don't want to be seen as someone who's failing at that work and the truth is that's all part of the process it's like a constant surrender to your your human experience the work for me is life is going to throw the things you need at you so like I said tomorrow something could happen that you know I'm being ridiculed again and I'm having to learn again you know or a praise could come and I'm having to learn how to handle that like I don't know what tomorrow is going to bring it's always a new experiment but it's almost as if like when you're doing this work people call it it's as you're swimming in the waves and now you have the skills to get through the wave the waves still come but you're just going through them differently do you wish they wouldn't come hell no that's life you know I I asked you said I'd accompany Ithaca do you know where it comes from no so some people think they're like "Oh Ithaca New York." No it comes from a poem by Kafi um I asked David Geffen uh years ago with his extraordinary life and career when did he feel like it was like enough i was 30 years old when I met him and I asked him that question the first meal we ever had and he looked at me and he said "That's not how life works it goes up and down this." He goes "I want you to read a poem." And he gives me Ithaca by Kafi and I named my holding company i had SB projects but then when I did the holding company and started doing other things too i named it after this poem because I was so moved by it and the concept of the poem of Ithaca is you're on the way to the island of Ithaca in the Greek islands and along the way you're going to see so many different things and you're going to meet scholars and you're going to you know learn wisdom and all these different things and when you find Ithaca finally if you find her poor she did not fool you because it was never about the destination always about the journey and I think right now if there if I get to this end game with you like that's no fun then it's over so like keep the waves coming bad skin i've had it and I'm sure many of you listening have had it too or maybe you have it right now i know how draining it can be especially if you're in a job where you're presenting often like I am so let me tell you about something that's helped both my partner and me and my sister which is red light therapy i only got into this a couple of years ago but I wish I'd known a little bit sooner i've been using our show sponsors Bon Chargers infrared sauna blanket for a while now but I just got hold of their red light therapy mask as well red light has been proven to have so many benefits for the body like any area of your skin that's exposed will see a reduction in scarring wrinkles and even blemishes it also helps with complexion it boosts collagen and it does that by targeting the upper layers of your skin and Bon Charge ships worldwide with easy returns and a year-long warranty on all of their products so if you'd like to try it yourself head over to boncharge.com/diary and use code diary for 25% off any product sitewide just make sure you order through this link bondcharge.com/diary with code diary i made the biggest investment I've ever made in a company because of my girlfriend i came home one night and my lovely girlfriend was up at 1:00 a.m in the morning pulling her hair out as she tried to piece together her own online store for her business and in that moment I remembered an email I'd had from a guy called John the founder of Stanto our new sponsor and a company I've invested incredibly heavily in and Stanto helps creators to sell digital products courses coaching and memberships all through a simple customizable link in bio system and it handles everything payments bookings emails community engagement and even links with Shopify and I believe in it so much that I'm going to launch a Stan challenge and as part of this challenge I'm going to give away $100,000 to one of you if you want to take part in this challenge if you want to monetize the knowledge that you have visit steven bartlet.stan.store to sign up and you'll also get an extended 30-day free trial of Stanto if you use that link your next move could quite frankly change everything i I told Daniel E that I was interviewing you a couple of months ago and he sat me down in his LA office and was like I've got to tell you a story about that Scooter Bron guy i've got to tell you something he said that when he made the Forbes under 30 list when he was a young man in I think Stockholm Sweden he said he randomly got a phone call out of the blue from you and you had decided to call everybody on the Forbes 30 under 30 billboard oh the billboard it was Billboard 30 under 30 i thought it was foot Forbes and you decided to call all every single person on the list just to introduce yourself i when I heard that I thought [ __ ] wow you don't want to know why why cuz every single time I met someone very accomplished and successful and they wanted to help me they'd say "Well who are you trying to reach?" And they'd say "Oh my gosh I've known them for 20 years 30 years." And they would pick up the phone call and their power was in relationship that was expansive and and long and they knew each other from the beginning not that they had met some powerful club at the end and what I realized was the real power is in community and I wanted to know my peers i wanted to grow with them that we didn't need to go and find someone who already had it we needed to support each other how old were you when you did that 27 so you were 27 and you called everybody on that list such a cool thing to do so many people are now going to go do that but it's such a cool thing to do by the way I am an early investor in Spotify because of that phone call he was just I'm sure he told you this he was just a company in Sweden he didn't tell me this part oh yeah he was just When I called him he was you know they were talking about this new thing Spotify but it was in Sweden and we met and I tried to get in right away after we met cuz I was like what is this and he didn't let me in at first and then you know I went and met Shaq you know oh Shaq good friend of mine i met Shaq in London we walked around and then Da Wallik was like advising them and um I ended up getting to be a significant you know investor at that point in my life in this you know new young company Spotify and I have not sold a share in probably 18 years you haven't sold a [ __ ] no I'm a firm believer in that company and I'm a firm believer in Daniel and I and I think listen I hear all the time where people are like "Oh look you know this is so unfair." Daniel Ek with his bravery and his foresight saved the music industry he gave value to our industry again he found a way to make us go from going in one direction to the most successful we've ever been and I don't think people realize that and give him enough credit for what he did people don't understand the machine they just think well record sales went away and now we've got this streaming fee and it's lower so what is the context we're missing there what did he what did that company do it gave value to our business it gave you know uh multiples on publishing and masters that we had never seen before because now everyone's music can be heard and heard for a long time you know at the time Daniel came along all I would hear going in the music business is "Man you missed the 80s and 90s sorry kid you know this business is going down." You know and Daniel with streaming made it so that you know these these major labels and these independent companies and you know these artists are able to do things they've never been able to do before one on bringing that amount of revenue to our business but two also bringing our global community together and uh and that was Daniel's foresight and his vision and his uh I mean he didn't have any relationships he didn't know the major labels crazy isn't it you know he he he saved the music industry and I think now that you know he's the biggest thing in the music industry it's easy to point at him as like the big bad oh and yes he's always trying to innovate and change but he has brought more money back into our industry than we ever thought would be there and um and I'm grateful to him and I think he he saved a lot of careers i also would like to add a couple of words to that just to say what an unbelievably humble smart kind human being he is it's an impossible story for it for to do what he did out of Stockholm as well not Silicon Valley and for it to be the dominant platform and still to be the best platform even as a podcast it's my favorite platform by far and they've just decided in the last 2 to 3 months which is actually why I was over at Spotify's office to meet him that they're going to start paying podcasters revenue that we've never been paid before they're going to cut us in on the Spotify membership fee which means that again it's going to fuel this whole industry apple aren't paying us anything but Spotify have decided to pay podcasters who upload on video which is going to mean that people can quit their jobs and and focus daniel's a very innovative guy and I remember him as the kid I called on that list and who when he came to the United States a couple weeks later played me in ping pong eight times you know and that's how we became friends and um he's incredibly humble incredibly smart incredibly hardworking and he has changed a lot of people's lives what's next for you Scooter should I call you Scott or Scooter either one and I'm proud of both now okay i'm going to call you Scott okay what's what is next in if we sit here in 10 years time do you have any idea what that chapter looked like or do you have any idea what would have had to have happened for you to consider it a success the only thing I want to make sure is that you know I stay I want to be the father to my children right that I that I want to be that I continue that that's the thing like that's the one consistent thing i want to make sure that I put them first that they are my priority because I get them until they're 18 and then you know they're going to be like "Dad we're out." Yeah um and I'm still going to obviously look forward to the next chapter but um I got 10 years of that i think something I'm excited about the next chapter is like what does love look like what does relationship look like um and then I'm excited to be a rookie again and try new things and get into industries cuz I I said to you before we started taping you know you asked me about AI and I said I feel like we're in the beginning of an industrial revolution and a cold war at the same time but there's just so much opportunity because things are shifting and things are moving and we're becoming a more productive society because like you I've gotten to see some of the things that are coming on the technology side and it's mind-blowing what's coming and it's mind-blowing what's already happening that people a lot of people don't even realize and the innovation is going to get faster and faster and faster and I think the one thing that will never go away is humans want for taste for human error for experiences you know if anything during co we saw national parks explode people had time for experiences I think AI is going to make us more productive we're going to have more time for experiences and I'm excited for And I'm excited for what that world looks like and I think there will always be growing pains when there's change but on the other side societies have always been measured by productivity not by wealth how productive is that society we're about to be the most productive society we've ever been it's quite it is quite scary but it's also extremely exciting and I think I think both responses are quite natural i think excitement is often present where fear is and um I the choice that I'm personally just making is to lean in and to mess around and to learn when we spoke earlier you were telling me that you'll stay up all night long like learning how to code with AI and you're trying to understand all the AI tools that are in front of us so you can kind of be first because you feel like you know you weren't at the right place in the.com boom and you want to make sure that you're in there can I ask you what you consider success is it you don't want to miss out like what what is the success why do you feel like you want to not miss out what do you want to be first to if you if you achieve something on the other side because you actually master AI and you are one of the first what are you hoping happens so I think I'm trying I'm running from a fear and the fear is I'm 32 now and I've I've been playing at the frontier my whole life so like my first business was in social media i rode that wave into sure it changed my life i was relevant it made me feel great i built on on that frontier as the wave came into shore then the blockchain came around started a company called Third Webb valued $160 million amazing i was on the frontier then this AI thing comes along and it feels like the wave is coming in and I'm I've got a surfboard and I've got to decide whether I want to take this wave or not and if I I feel like if I miss the wave if I'm not involved if I'm not building there then it's quite existential it's like then I don't know what can happen and I don't like that i don't like the unknown and it goes back to many things we talked about but I Do you ever swim in the ocean yes i'm not the best swimmer in the world i'm saying But you'll go in the ocean not just in the beach will you go out in the ocean and get in the water if I have my floating vest on cuz I can't I can't swim which is interesting though you'll get in though yeah yeah 100% i have a a top I wear to go in no I understand that but I I find that interesting only because the ocean is a place where you have absolutely no control mhm you know it's the ocean can do what we want you don't know what's in there you know a lot of people like I see when they want control i realized there were years that I kind of just didn't swim in the ocean i swim on the beach but I didn't really want to go into the ocean because I didn't have control out there you know i didn't know what was in there i didn't know what could get me i didn't like I couldn't see it coming i couldn't control the outcome and you talk a lot about this like the need for control that makes you feel uncomfortable but you are also a very big risk taker i mean you're 32 years old you've achieved all this you're pushing yourself to find out more you're defying all the odds you got the kid from home who's still talking crap because you know look at everything you're doing and and I I guess I'm I'm intrigued because one you don't give yourself the credit of how much you go into the unknown it's almost like you do it out of fear and necessity but I'm really pushing you on like what does success look like for you because you're on the surfboard you keep surfing i'm trying to figure out like where where is what is success to you is it you're you're 90 years old and you're looking back at your life what are the things that you could not live without you'd be disappointed if they weren't there i imagine it's going to be my kids i imagine it's going to be my relationship with my partner i think that's the going back to this sounds like a crazy thing to say but if there was a button on the table and I had to press it to kill myself or my partner I'd press it to kill myself and that was a really clarifying thought for me because I was like I would literally take my I'd give my life to save this person this other human being my nieces my brother um my fam my f my my family i'm confused because you haven't named all the achievements of AI hello hello you haven't named you know all the things that you think you need to do you know the um Ithaca part of what I think makes the journey exciting is being like slightly terrified and having something that consumes you and that challenges you and that scares you a little bit and and building and experimenting and leaning in like when I was a kid in my bedroom I'd turn my bunk bed into a business it'd be a salon one week and then the next week I'd be dismantling my brother's radio and trying to sell the parts and like so I've always been extremely curious extremely experimental i've always tried to build things so I think that's my fun but I also I these days the more I've done this podcast the more I've learned to like question myself question what I'm saying listen I think you're an incredibly intriguing guy that's why I wanted to meet you and and I love how much you push yourself and you question things but I find it very interesting that when I asked you about your 90s and when you look back you name things that are very attainable to you cuz you found someone that loves you and you love them and then when we're talking throughout this entire conversation it seems that when you actually open about your personal life you spend a lot of your time avoiding that thing and focusing on all these others that make you feel worthy to experience that thing and I I guess like what I'm just trying to say to you for as smart a guy as you are this is coming from someone who literally suffered from the same thing the thing that you want the most at 90 you got true the building in your room and the building with AI should be just fun h it shouldn't be terrifying anymore it should be fun because the terrifying thing is turning 90 and not having the thing you really want that's when I woke up and so what does that mean for me and what what for anyone that can resonate with that what does that mean that they should do i know you said like turn off the cameras and but can you do both i don't know i think everyone's journey is different i think everyone experiences things in a different way some people are able to like you talked about with addiction some people are able to say just stop and other people can't and other people have to go through a different process to get there so I'm trying to understand the balance though like how do I know if I've got the balance right in that i hate that word because uh someone I really admired said to me harmonize you know um so how do I know if Jeff Bezos was the one who said it he was like don't balance things harmonize why why weigh things that you love against each other you love building in your room you love learning things and building things you love that you love your partner and you want to build a family with her one day it's not about balance it's about putting them together bring her into every aspect of it bring her into the fears that you have with this bring her into you know that's what I I you know I didn't know that you know it's it's bring every aspect of your life together and share and let them be with the up and downs and you do do the up and downs and kind of go across the board and then also like I said do the work to find out why you ask all these questions but still with all the nudging that's happened do the work to find out why you're so afraid to actually turn off the camera and just do it so are you saying then to get out of like competition and get into that curiosity that you described you said about these two states that you can invest in look I I think being competitive is always a beautiful thing if used in the right way i love that but I will say to you when you talk to me about where the AI staying up at night we're building your company came from it was a kid building in his room mhm that kid wasn't competing with anyone he was having fun in his room he was building that's when you're at your best it's when you're actually just building for the joy of building and I think along the way based on our fears based on the I'm not enough based on all these different things we start to take that thing that brought us joy and we start to think if I don't crush it now that people are watching me do it I'm not good at it and you're asking me for like this question is almost if it's like advice i'm trying to figure it out the same time you are you know so I guess I'll pose it back to you you've done research do you know a little bit about my life what would you say to me what should I be doing next what do you think I should be nudged to do i think what you're what you've done today is some of the most valuable work that you can do and what I say today I mean is as you've sat here and the vulnerability that you've expressed the honesty the nuance to certain points I think it's one of the most important things you can do because many of us don't get to climb up to the top of the mountain top and see what's up there and you're choosing to go up there and then shout back down about your marriage about business about your mental health and everything in between about mistakes you've made injustices all these kinds of things probably one of the most powerful things you can do because as you you've identified there'll be a couple of kids maybe me being one who will not have to be burnt not have to hit the rock bottom to learn the lesson and there's actually very few people I do this for a living there's very few people that have both that experience and the ability to articulate it in a way that is resonant in terms of this next season of your life i mean you're doing so much well like it was so nice actually hearing you on the phone to your kids yesterday when they came over and it was like dad I want a pencil or whatever he was saying and you were like Stephen you said to me I've got a you hung up the phone and you you addressed your kid you called me back in 10 seconds and I thought there was something really special and telling that you were willing to end a phone call with someone and put the phone away and immediately be present with your child to have a conversation with him to have a conversation then call me back straight away most people don't do that so I thought okay he's really this really means a lot to him in this season you know when when you just said me what I did here today I smiled cuz I was being really honest with myself and I really appreciated you saying that but I also smiled cuz I was being honest with myself of how funny it is that when I leave here all I've been doing lately when I'm away from my kids is thinking of what do I build next so I can show my value i'm going back to that old habit because I'm excited to build something else but when I'm being really deep honest with myself really going deep it comes from this place of well if I can do it again then I'll show them this time will be the one that I'm happy about this time like it's that same old thing that comes every single time and I still want to build something because I get joy out of that but same while I'm giving you this advice when you said that to me I went "Oh man he's right this is the most valuable thing I could probably do." But the reason I don't do it is because deep down I feel not worthy of it i feel like who am I to tell anybody anything you know all of us we feel like a fraud when we're giving any kind of advice and that creeps up in me and I I get to this very if I'm being very vulnerable it gets to this place of I don't even want to say "Oh thank you for saying that." at first because I'm like "Well if someone's watching they'll be like this arrogant guy or you get all the voices coming back in your head." But the truth is I want to go and build something next i want to fall in love again i want to be present for my children and I want to be someone who can give advice from a place of wisdom and be proud that I give it but also receive it because I've learned just as much talking to you and what I will tell you is you are way ahead of the game at 32 compared to where I was thank you and I had a lot of success at 32 but I wasn't asking these questions and I wasn't pushing myself the way you did and I think it is an incredibly cool thing that this is what you get to do as a career cuz I think you get to help a lot of people um and don't ever lose sight of the fact that the kid who was building in his room is now building in a lot of other people's rooms and it's really impressive thank you that means an awful lot coming from you i've been extremely excited by this conversation and I've been telling everybody in our team because of the conversations we have on the phone and I knew that if those conversations are any reflection of the conversation we'd have on my show it would be really pivotal for me and it has been it's been the nicest punch in the face [Laughter] me too right you know people have probably wonder why I say all this stuff in public but um what an unbelievable opportunity it is to meet someone like you and get to get to learn from you genuinely to get to learn from you like what an unbelievablely crazy thing from this kid from Botswana to get to meet someone like you and learn from you to the point that my life has a chance of being better than I've spoken to you and then to get to share that with people who I know are struggling with the same [ __ ] who are contending with the same battles so that is why I I make the decision to have these conversations in the way that I do and um by the way I just want just cuz I struggle with giving myself credit i wanted to say this to you the kid from Basana is teaching me as well the kid from Cascap you know it's uh as much as like that's an incredible thing I wanted to come on here because I've listened to your podcast before and I've been one of those listeners who grew and learned from it so thank you honestly and continue to give yourself the credit you deserve and continue to ask the questions i do want to blow a little bit of smoke up your ass for something else that you've done because I don't think people have the all of this information but when I looked at the breadth of philanthropic work that you've done whether it's the support you gave to Manchester which is the city that I consider my my hometown after the um Ariana attack ah oh my god you got a B on your arm but all these other foundations the list of philanthropic work that you've done is so long that I that I would have to we'd have to do another podcast just to go through all of these things and you don't talk about it publicly i don't see you posting about it all the time so for me that's always indicated that you're doing it for the right reasons but it's incredible so thank you for doing that as well and you deserve credit that you never you never get for doing all of these things and this inspired me as well because sometimes I think as entrepreneurs we can fall into the trap of thinking we we cut down the forest then donate to the bees you know my mom is the reason um she as I started building in college she said "Just promise me you know you'll do Sedaka which is charity within our our culture to give back." And I basically said "Every aspect of my business will have a give back component." And Shauna Neep who runs our family foundation like our job is to make the money her job is to help me give it away and um and sometimes it's with money sometimes it's with effort but I've met so many incredible heroes unsung heroes in all this work um people who really dedicate full-time their lives to this and I really always I always say um my grandfather before he passed he said "If your glass is filling with water and you're one of the lucky people in this world that God continues to pour water into your glass well you better start pouring it into other people's glasses otherwise it's just going to spill and make a mess." And I never forgot that but even when you sold Hib there was this tremendous amount of money that you turned around and gave to all the employees which a lot of people don't know about and you also gave money to several of your artists and from what I've researched tens of millions were given to your artists as well and you could have kept all that money to yourself so when I hear that someone's gone around and given that much money to 264 of their employees and artists that have worked with them you kind of get a picture of who the guy is we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest not knowing who they're going to be leaving it for and the question that has been left for you is now I'm nervous why do people always get nervous it's like a lot of questions all day the question left for you is if you could do one thing that fear of failure has kept you from doing what would it be and why has it kept you from doing it man if I could do one thing that's a really great question [Music] um you know at first I was thinking it would be like oh say sorry to somebody or this that but I feel like I've gotten to do that with people in my life for the last couple years for things that like I wanted to kind of talk about and some things you realize like it's just not the season for that you know it takes two and I felt myself it was almost the fear of saying this out loud um write write a book oh thank God yeah i I've always uh I think it's it's my brother wrote a book a really great one called The Promise of a Pencil and it was a New York Times bestseller and I was always like "That's Adam's thing." And I've always wanted to write but I always feel like my mind and you know the things I'm working on in myself all these things they change like every week and I've always felt like deep down like "Oh yeah you should write a book but like you're really not going to write a great book if you do." And I think it's always held me back from actually just sitting down and doing it i got goosebumps then because as in that silence for some bizarre reason I swear on my mother's I I was thinking I hope he says he's going to write a book i swear to you that's what went through my mind i went I hope he says he's going to write a book that's why I went thank God well I didn't say I was going to write it i said fear's been holding me back but maybe maybe you'll turn off the camera and go in your nudge and this will be the nudge for me okay well we hope you do Scooter because um I've been so shocked and blown away by your wisdom and your ability to articulate things and the stage of life that you've you've arrived at is for me as an objective observer just the perfect moment i appreciate that and uh we'll keep doing the work together and this is the beginning of a great friendship and I'm really honored to be here and really happy for all your success thank you the feeling is mutual thank you brother thank you so much thank you make sure you keep what I'm about to say to yourself i'm inviting 10,000 of you to come even deeper into the diary of a CEO welcome to my inner circle this is a brand new private community that I'm launching to the world we have so many incredible things that happen that you are never shown we have the briefs that are on my iPad when I'm recording the conversation we have clips we've never released we have behindthe-scenes conversations with the guests and also the episodes that we've never ever released and so much more in the circle you'll have direct access to me you can tell us what you want this show to be who you want us to interview and the types of conversations you would love us to have but remember for now we're only inviting the first 10,000 people that join before it closes so if you want to join our private close community head to the link in the description below or go to daccircle.com i will speak to you then heat heat n [Music] [Music]