Anthony Scaramucci
Founder and Managing Partner, SkyBridge Capital
If you're talking about your life with vulnerability, and you're talking about life with fallibility, you're creating space for your employees and your partners to also fail.
Summary
In this episode of Leadership Matters, Alan Fleischmann sits down with Anthony Scaramucci, Founder and Managing Partner of SkyBridge Capital, for an open conversation about leadership, humility, and reinvention. From his working-class roots on Long Island to Goldman Sachs, the White House, and beyond, Anthony shares lessons in resilience, failure, and self-leadership. He discusses the importance of mentorship, the influence of Stoic philosophy, and how staying adaptable — whether through embracing digital assets or AI — defines great leadership. Together, Alan and Anthony explore what it means to lead with candor, curiosity, and compassion in a fast-changing world.
Mentions & Resources
The Little Book of Bitcoin by Anthony Scaramucci
Guest Bio
Anthony Scaramucci is the founder and managing partner of SkyBridge, a global alternative investment firm, and founder and chairman of SALT, a global thought leadership forum and venture studio.
He is co-host of two podcasts, “The Rest Is Politics US” and “Open Book,” and author of six books, including most recently “The Little Book of Bitcoin.”
Prior to founding SkyBridge in 2005, Scaramucci co-founded investment partnership Oscar Capital Management, which was sold to Neuberger Berman in 2001. Earlier, he worked in Private Wealth Management at Goldman Sachs & Co.
In 2022, Scaramucci was ranked #47 in Cointelegraph’s Top 100 Influencers in Crypto and Blockchain. In 2016, he was ranked #85 in Worth Magazine’s Power 100: The 100 Most Powerful People in Global Finance. In 2011, he received Ernst & Young’s New York Financial Services “Entrepreneur of the Year” Award and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).
Scaramucci served on President Donald J. Trump’s Presidential Transition Team Executive Committee in 2016 before serving briefly as White House Communications Director.
Scaramucci, a native of Long Island, New York, holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics from Tufts University and a Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School.
Transcript
Alan Fleischmann
Welcome to leadership matters on Sirius XM and at leadershipmattersshow.com I'm your host; Alan Fleischman. Today, I'm joined by a man whose career has spanned Wall Street, Washington, the world of media --- Anthony Scaramucci, known to many as "The Mooch". Anthony is the Founder and Managing Partner of Sky Bridge capital, a global investment firm he built, after a successful run at Goldman Sachs and CO-founding Oscar Capital Management in 2011 Anthony received the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award, New York Award in the financial services category, and was 2016 in 2016 was ranked number 85 in worth magazine's Power 100 the 100 most powerful people in global finance. He's also a best selling author, a sought after commentator and speaker on topics like business and politics, and a co-host of the US version of the rest is politics podcast, a platform that brings candid, often surprising conversations to the national stage. Anthony's journey has been one of resilience, reinvention and candor. From law school to Wall Street to a brief but memorable stint in the White House and back again, is one of the most outspoken, reflective voices in finance and leadership today, I'm excited to have him on the show to join me to discuss his career path, his influences and the many lessons in leadership that he has learned along his career. Anthony, welcome to Leadership Matters. It's a pleasure to have you on today.
Anthony Scaramucci
So first of all, it's a very generous introduction. Alan, so I appreciate that, and you didn't mention I got fired from the White House or anything like that. It was very, very nice of you, and I appreciate you. You almost read the introduction the way my mother wrote it, so I do appreciate you doing that.
Alan Fleischmann
Well, I will tell you this. I know you well enough to know and I've watched you in dynamic moments with your mother and how you talk about your mother, so I know who to be nice to, and I know who to be fearful of. And your mother may be one of those you know people that your wisdom, that you share often, will be shared and kind of, let me tell you what my mother would say, kind of context a lot.
Anthony Scaramucci
Well, you know, she's a big influence on all of us, and she never went to college. She was a lefty, but because she's also Roman Catholic, the nuns weren't having it Alan they had, they forced her to write with her right in she's a woman that was born in 1937 so some old school stuff going on back then. But she's a lefty. So, you know, left people thinking, left handed people think in their right side of their mind. So she's way more creative than me. And yeah, we're very smart, but her generation, they didn't go to college, at least in that Italian community that she grew up in and, you know, she married my dad, who was also, you know, blue collar. He was a crane operator out here on Long Island, but, you know, they're good people, and they, you know, and they were, they were hard on us too. I mean, there was no, there was no nonsense in that house. You know, my father was pretty strict dude, but he was a fair guy. And also, you know, he worked, this man, we got, we had to go, we had to go to work in our family. So I'm working, you're working, you know, same, same sort of things. You know, there's, there's one difference between Jews and Italians, Alan that I've identified. You want to know what it is? Food, summer camp. Summer Camp,
Alan Fleischmann
Okay, all right.
Anthony Scaramucci
Yeah, the Jews send the kids to summer camp. The Italians don't do that. I mean, you know, I mean, but, but, yeah.
Alan Fleischmann
The food, we never, we never did either. I wanted my girls nearby, yeah.
Anthony Scaramucci
I see that, yeah. You see, may have more Italian in you these things, but like my, I feel like the food, people say food, I said, not really, because we've, we've merged, we've merged. We've sort of, you know, if you said the food 50 years ago, I would have said food. But now there's been a merge. There's been a great merger. Ask Sebastian Maniscalco, there has been a great merger between the Italians and Jews when it comes to food.
Alan Fleischmann
I love that. I love when he talks about, he's the one that made me think it's food, because he’s actually the one that comes out and talks about, right? Oh, you know, when you go to an Italian meal, you immediately start with olive oil and bread and get going. When you go to a Passover Seder, they're like, doing all this stuff around the table, and he's like, where's the food? And they bring out. They're bringing out things that you don't want to eat. What is that?
Anthony Scaramucci
We're losing them. Bring the meatballs out. No, I love that guy, but, yeah, but for me like you, I grew up in a structured, fairly traditional family, very dysfunctional. You know, I always used to tease my parents. My dad's past now, he says, I say they're married for 67 years. They tried to put 500 years of fighting into a 67 year marriage, you know. And, and that's, that's life. That's how it works. You know,
Alan Fleischmann
Tell us a little bit more about the family life. Any brothers and sisters and, yeah, get an old do they kind of house you grew up with the same house you were you living in one house, the whole, the whole child
Anthony Scaramucci
Lived in the you know, my mother still lives in the house that I grew up in. My dad passed, as I mentioned, I have an older brother. He's retired. I have a younger sister who's sort of a, she's a. Was a buyer at Bloomingdale's like a personal shopping expert, but I have 12 cousins that live in the local neighborhood as me, and then, believe it or not, I have an even greater extended family, some living in Pennsylvania and some living in Michigan, and some living in the town that my grandmother grew up in, because in the Scaramucci family, my grandmother broke from the family headed for America, and the other side of the family stayed in Italy. So when I go, when I go and visit Italy, I have many relatives there, and a couple of different towns that we're still close to as a result of my grandmother.
Alan Fleischmann
That's very cool. I love to hear a little bit. I mean, you get it, you get this. Get a sense of powerful lessons that were learned in that household growing up. Certainly, as you said, it was a strict household with your dad and all that, but your mom, you know, when anybody that follows you gets to know you, becomes friends with you, or just watches you from afar, your mom is a big figure in your life. I mean, she's a big figure. And, yeah, no, the kind of the values and lessons, kind of like the don't mess with me, kind of attitude, Don't bullshit me. You know, I know you, you know, this is what you got to live by. I'm curious whether that fire would get created. Because you obviously, you kept the name, you kept the house in the night, not too far away for a long time, if I know, if I'm remembering, but you kind of did create an entirely different life than anybody else in your family at that moment. Yeah. Well, I live,
Anthony Scaramucci
You know, I live two miles from my, I mean, live two miles from my folks. I live in Manhasset. My parents were raised in sort of small houses in Port Washington, sort of in the blue collar middle class area. I moved to a little bit of, you know, they have a bigger house and so forth, but I didn't want to go crazy. My My thing is, and I think, I think there's a paradox to wealth, by the way, we're to talk about leadership, but let's talk about the way you lead yourself. I find people that are super, super rich, they get a little paranoid. They're flying privately. So guess what, there's no people around. They're in yachts, so they're not on cruise ships. So guess what, there's no people around, and they usually secure themselves around a security perimeter. Again, less people around, and there's loneliness to that to me.
Now it may be wonderful to them, and God bless them, and people should be free to run their lives any way that they want. But after I made a little bit of money, it dawned on me that I didn't want to be, first of all, pushing it in my blue collar family's face. So I didn't want to live in this outsized, braggadocious way. And then the second thing was, I wanted my kids to be able to cross the street, ring the doorbell to neighbors and hang out in a neighborhood. I didn't want to be on like a 15 acre estate in the middle of nowhere, again, alone. So the mansion you're alone, the plane you're alone, the yacht, you're alone. There's a paradox to it, and so that's for me. And now everyone's different. But again, when you talk about leadership, it's also leading yourself. What is important to you, what are the components of your life that make wealth and it's it's also health and self, right? How you treat yourself, how you take care of yourself, and how you take care of the people that you really love, but, but, you know, you mentioned my mom, so I'm just going to tell you she was strict. I learned a lot from them. They paid their bills. That was a big deal. In my family, you pay your bills. And my dad used to say, if you can't afford the price of the ticket, don't go to the movies. My dad's attitude was, you know, I've lived under my means, this has saved me many times on Wall Street, because, as you know, I've had two or three near death experiences from the risk taking I've had. I had a near death experience politically, I've had two near death experiences from market crashes or crypto crashes. And I think what keeps you going is being a person that has integrity and being a person that's very straight up with people and direct and honest. And I got that from my parents. They were, they were no BS people, Alan, and I'll tell a quick story about my dad.
You'll get a kick out of this, because this is what he was like. He had a couple of dress shirts he was very proud of. You know, sometimes they wouldn't have the dinner and much form more formal back in the day. And so there was a laundry mat that laundered These shirts. And he was coming out of the laundry mat with the hanger of these dress shirts. And there was a parking ticket on his car on Main Street. I was probably 11 years old, and he's, he opened up the door, he he he clipped the thing. He says, let's walk up to the post office with a parking ticket. I'm gonna buy a money order to pay the party. I was like, Dad, don't you have a checkbook? No, no. We got to pay the ticket right away. We got to pay pay the ticket right away. That was my father. So, I mean, my my contract. Now, when I remodeled my house, my contractor was like, what you should give me? The. Bill I'm going to pay you right now. You know, you know we, you know we watch our p's and q's. And if you worked at sky bridge, again, talking about leadership, because leadership is about culture. And you know some of my staff at sky bridge, you've met many of them over the years. You work at sky bridge, you get a lecture from me. We don't do anything to dishonor my dad. He gave me my last name, clean. He paid his taxes. He'd do any funny business, he paid his bills, and he helped me get to where I am. So we don't need to do anything from a trading perspective, anything from an ethics perspective, that would reflect poorly on the work effort of this man who helped put me where I am today. So, so, and if you don't understand that, then you can't work at sky bridge. And by the way, I don't even have a personal trading account, you know. And a lot of people are astonished by that, but why would I do that? I put my money in my fund, and if you're my investor, you're riding alongside me. And if I get hit, you get hit, and if I make money, you're making money. That's how it really should be, and that's that we've lived at sky bridge for the last 20 years.
Alan Fleischmann
That's also important, because you recognize that, you know it's called sky bridge, not Scaramucci, Inc, but your name is on the door, and that name matters and it's not just your name, it's the name of those people that carried you to where you are.
Anthony Scaramucci
No question, and it's a nice place. So I always tell people who want to be a good leader, watch your pronouns. It'd be me, me, me, I, I, okay. It's a new place. People work with me at sky bridge. They don't work for me. It's a very big distinction, because if you distinguish it that way, it becomes way more collaborative.
Alan Fleischmann
Well, you also say, you bring up two points. The earlier thing you said about the isolation that happens when people are financially successful or whatever else, definition of someone's success, if you're if it means that you're going to be becoming more isolated. It does affect how you make decisions. It'll affect, actually, if you're in and we're all ultimately in the relationship business, no matter what you do, if you've got your own enterprise or you're working in enterprise, but if you're going to be limited in your contact with the people that you need to relate to, then you're whether it's politics or civil society or business, you're going to lose touch, and you might not know it. So you may make bad decisions. That would be an interesting book, actually, whether or not this isolation part that you're talking about, whether they're whether there's a correlation with people's success on the way up, and whether or not there's a reason why the I know, the people that I know, get having to work, and we get to work with so many extraordinary people. It's the people who try really hard to stay out of the barriers and remove the barriers. I don't mean for security, but just in general, just, I want to make sure I'm talking to people who never lose humility. Yeah, you know, who actually feel grateful. They're the ones who are successful
Anthony Scaramucci
100% and by the way, by the way, those are the people you're going to learn the most from as well, because you and I know the people who sort of sanitize their timeline in life. You know, I've read more than one billionaire biography. I laugh out loud. I mean, the guy's got everything right. He's going up into the right and a perfect thing. He's never made a bad decision, and he sort of sanitized his life. I feel like if you're talking about your life with vulnerability, and you're talking about the life that you're living with human fallibility, you're creating space for your employees and your partners to also fail, and you're also watching your kids. And so I have five children. I almost feel that some of my shortcomings, my White House failure and my firing almost helped my kids in a very weird, perverse way, because they're like, Okay, my dad really failed when daddy really stumbled. He was able to pick himself up, and that sort of fallibility provides lots of space for them. Alan, it's okay to fail. It takes some risk, exactly.
And you know, my dad's not feeling bad about himself. He doesn't have a self pity gene, and he's not trying to pretend something didn't happen, and he's accountable. Mistakes were made, got me fired. Guess who deserves the blame for my firing? Okay, that would be me. And I don't, I don't ever, I don't ever do this. I'm not the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz. I'm accountable. And I think it's very important for people when you're talking about leadership. Can you be accountable? Can you show your vulnerability? Can you admit when you've gotten something wrong? Can you then, obviously, because this is the axiom, you know, at your age, I know at my age, you're going to get things wrong, and then axiomatically, how are you going to handle yourself after you've gotten it wrong? What pivot are you going to make? How are you going to adapt? Because, you know, I was teaching this entrepreneur class the other day, and I said to the kid, if you're going to be an entrepreneur, you're going to fail. Guaranteed you're going to have a setback. You know, Michael Dell, who's a personal friend, helped me get sky bird started in 1993 his laptops were catching on fire. It's 32 years ago. People don't remember it, but his laptops were catching on fire in commercial aircraft. That's not a good thing for a company. Okay, the stock went from 41 to seven, and it looked really bad. And Michael pulled it together. He raised the rights offering. He raised more capital for his firm. He restructured the engineering process, restructured the batteries, and he, you know, and again, there's not him. Bezos, you know, they were writing about him in 1998 the company wasn't going to survive. Elon Musk on his knees in oh eight. Even Bill Gates, the first operating system that they delivered to IBM, wasn't working properly. So if you're going to be a leader, you're going to be an entrepreneur, you're going to have setbacks, and you're going to have failure, and you've got to be able to adapt and pivot to it. And I think it's important if you tell people about it, I think they respect you more and they find you more relatable, and then they can share with you their fallibility, and that's really where the relationship starts.
Alan Fleischmann
It's also been a great phenomenon in this country, actually, I mean, especially Silicon Valley, where people were proud of the things that failed along the journey that got them where they are, and we don't celebrate that enough. I think the fact that you did that for your kids, and they can see that accountability, responsibility and vulnerability at the same time, it's a huge thing. But I'm sorry, the same thing. I remember Phil Knight from Nike. I got involved in this, but I remember years ago he got involved in, you know, the whole sweatshop thing, and it was just that it was really bad. And for Nike and everyone said it was the end. And the way he approached it was, I gotta find out, take accountability, take responsibility, to fix it. And he did, and he did it with authenticity. I look at him and many others as you do. It's the people that are authentic, who see the problem and want to fix it, who take accountability, who can actually turn it to something bigger and greater. Good. Examples, I'm curious, besides your folks, are there other mentors along the way, especially pre a team, before you went to college, that you want to do a shout out about people who really did kind of see something in you that made you think, Hey, you got to go beyond the neighborhood, you know, there's, you know, you got something going here. Anthony Scaramucci, you know, I'm curious whether there's anyone that stands
Anthony Scaramucci
Out. So it's interesting, because I've talked about this person. I got an email yesterday that I have to respond to. So there's a gentleman in my life by the name of John Zanetti, who's now passed, but he had a big impact on my life. He was the guidance counselor in my high school, and he visited my parents, and he encouraged my parents to push me to go to Tufts, even though my parents really couldn't afford tufts. Johnson Eddie took the point of view that that would be a really good thing for me to go to the private school, as opposed to the, you know, like at the public school, like a Binghamton or one of the Sunni schools, the state schools here in New York, and my parents listened to him, I ended up going to Tufts made a big difference. Tufts led to Harvard Law School.
I always look back on that and say, wow, it was so incredible. I mean, he came to their house. It was like April of 1982 Alan. My mother had one of those cast iron espresso pots, okay, like from the ancient world, when the espresso came out of this pot, it was coming out like motor oil. And they were, sitting there at the table smoking cigarillos and drinking. I mean, I'm surprised their hearts didn't explode. But anyway, they're sitting there, and Zanetti told my parents, you gotta, you gotta push this kid. He's got a high IQ, and he's gonna do a good job, but he's got to get pushed. And then when I got to Tufts, I met a gentleman who I'm actually visiting on Friday. He's 94 years young. His name is Saul Gittleman. He was the provost at Tufts. He was my faculty advisor there, and he wrote the recommendation for me for Harvard Law School. But he was also, he was my teacher. You know, I taught. I mean, I took from him, not taught. I took from him, German writers, believe it or not, Alan, I took an introduction to Yiddish literature. So I've read the trivia stories, Shaw Lamash, I'd read IB singer. I'm one of the few boys out there and then knows the difference between a sheath and a shiksa and this was a guy that I became very, very close to, and he became an intellectual, academic mentor of mine. And it's 40 years. It's 40 years since
I graduated from Tufts, and on Friday, I'm taking the day off, and I'm lifting myself up to Boston to go have lunch with him. Because one, it's an important thing to do. It's a tradition that I've had with him for the last four decades. And number two, you know, I mean, you know, we're only visiting planet Earth. And so I don't know how much longer him or I will be here, but at age 94 I owe him that respect to go up there and see him. And so, so to me, um, you know, I, I definitely need people, man, you need people. And I tell young people, ask for the favor. Benjamin Franklin said, if you, if you want to make a friend, ask him for a favor. Okay, people have a tendency to respond to that. You know, when I speak at these colleges, I'll stay after and I'll sit with the kid that waits on the line, and if they hand me the resume or they give me, I'll try to respond to them. You know, why? Alan, I had to do that to get to where I am. And so I just think it's important that you, you sort of pay it forward.
Alan Fleischmann
Yeah, I think just so again, it's actually, it's funny. I know who he is, and I've actually been interested in him. So you're, he's a pretty formidable figure that you have in your life. But he was all about academia or higher education and wasn't about getting a job. It was about, if I'm correct, it was about creating a life. It was about, well, if you Yeah, if you
Anthony Scaramucci
Remember one day University, I don't know if they still do that, but they used to take big advertisements out on the Washington Post or the New York Times. One day at university, you could sign up for the history, of World War Two, or the history of this history. When he retired from Tufts, he was one of those professors that would come and travel around the country and do those lectures. And so, yeah, he was about academics. He's about liberal arts. He was about, and I'll use his words. He was about lighting an intellectual fire under somebody, and not just teaching them and having them learn from you, but teaching them how to learn on their own. And that's one of the big things that I think the gift of higher education gives to people that are seeking it. You know, I'm a different person . I mean, I think I'm the same core person, but I'm a different person today at age 60 than I was at age 20. And to quote somebody like Jim Mattis, the Met Mad Dog Mattis is to call him, but he was the warrior monk. He's a very well read guy, General Mattis once said to me, and I'm sure he's written it somewhere, but he said, Hey, you can't get there on your own. You don't have enough life experience. You've got to read the books that are behind me or the books that are in your library, and you've got to learn from other people, and you got to get some insight from them on human nature, insight from them on best business practices, insight from them on psychology or physiology or whatever it may be, you're not going to get there on your own. So guys like Saul Gittleman really put a fever in me to read and to write. I've written a few books, but also to get out there and teach. Because when you're teaching, you're learning. Actually, sometimes you learn more from the students, and you actually are imparting to them through the process of teaching. So I try to do a little bit of all those things, you know.
Alan Fleischmann
I love that you're doing all that, you know, I'm obsessed with my office. Often thinks it's a nightmare because it becomes a scheduling challenge. But I'd love to help young people get into college. I love to help people, young people, with their first jobs after getting out of college. And I think there's and there's something about humility. What are the things that would inspire me to think differently? Your Saul Gilman analogy or references that bring that into it? I also know you as somebody who loves reading about the Stoics, and I'm curious about Saul, the one that introduced that to you? Or is that another path? But I know that, you know, I'm similar. So I remember you saying it. I was like, well, wow, I share that.
Anthony Scaramucci
Well, I mean, the stoics have become very popular recently. You know, there's a young philosopher by the name of Ryan Holiday that has blown up the ideas behind Marcus Aurelius, but I was introduced to the stoics by a colleague of Saul Gittleman at Tufts. His name was John Zarker, Z, a, r, k, E, R. He was the head of the Classics Department at Tufts University. Was a phenomenal lecturer. He looked like George Herbert Walker Bush. We used to tease him, you know, when we were in school, because I think that was the vice president at the time when I was in school in the 80s. But he was a brilliant guy. He introduced me to the stoics. And I would say that when I read Marcus Aurelius' meditations for the first time, it really resonated with me. You know, the idea that you're here, you're impermanent. You have to accept your mortality. You have to just embrace life as it's coming to you and not to get overly heated one way or the other. I tried to live by that, not perfect.
Of course, I haven't lived by that identically over the years, but there's many times, you know, I sold a piece of my business to FTX Sam bankman Fried, who's serving. Some time in jail was a very low moment for me. He went to jail. He owned a piece of my business. The assets that we held, like Bitcoin, went from 70,000 to 15,000. I mean, we were really getting torched at the time. And if you didn't have some level of stoicism in your personality, and you know, look, I mean, the Buddhists think like this as well. You're in a constant state of change. Things are impermanent. You're going to have good and bad things that happen to you in your life, and you have to adjust your personality to those expectations. You know, if someone said to me in one sentence, what is stoicism? For me, it's low expectations. You know, low expectations, no self pity, and enjoying every aspect of your life, even the things that are not going well, is part of the living experience. And try to get yourself into that frame of mind and that understanding that it's blessed to be if you think about how barren the universe is, you actually just think about the infinite nature of the universe, and the lack of animation in the universe, the fact that you and I happen to be here, made of stardust, talking to each other, is a miracle. And so you know, you know, if you believe in God, then it's a God like miracle. If you're an agnostic or an atheist, it's been generated from the universe. Whatever the hell it is, I'm gonna choose to enjoy it. And, and, you know, I tell my kids, look, yeah. And by the way, the words ought and should get them out of your vocabulary. I mean, forget it. And when my kids tell me, Well, this ought to happen, or this, this should
Alan Fleischmann
Be, should happen. This must be forgotten.
Anthony Scaramucci
Guys, come on, that you deal with the world the way it is. I'd love to play against LeBron James in the NBA. Okay? And I'm sitting on two phone books to speak to you right now, so I'm high enough for the camera. Okay, what are you gonna do? You just gotta accept your life for what it is, you know what I mean, and
Alan Fleischmann
Celebrate what you got. But you also there's a sense of that stoicism too, you said it earlier, too. There's a level of humility when it comes to, I come from dust. I am going to be dust, if you know. And this sense of mortality, you know, I only got one life to live and one name to live it. And I think that's what keeps you grounded, even in moments when you make mistakes, that you go back to where you know, kind of where the core, the core is as well. Did you know what did you study when you were at Thompson? Did you know that you wanted to go to get a law degree at Harvard? At Harvard, I guess you didn't know that. Did you know you want to get a law degree? And then, did you go right to Harvard?
Anthony Scaramucci
Yeah, so I went, I went right to Harvard. You know, back then it was easy to do that. You went from college into law school. I think now you have to spend a year or two maybe, you know, like in business school, they ask you to do some work before you return to business school. I think that's also true now for some of these law schools, but Harvard, for me, was down the block from Tufts. I would love to tell you that I was more substantial in my analytical thinking at age 21 than I actually was. But I wasn't. I was very superficial. And I read an article in Time magazine that they were paying law lawyers for the first year, lawyers on Wall Street. I think the firm was Cravath Swain and more. Just call it Cravath now, but they were paying them $65,000 a year. My dad was making 32,000 a year at the time. And Alan, I was like, oh, my God, that's like, more money than I could ever want or need. I'm gonna go to law school. Was I thinking about the long term practice of law? Was I thinking about being a lawyer? Well, truth be told, I probably didn't put enough thought into that when I got to law school. I liked the education, but when I was working at law firms, I didn't like the tedium of the law.
Now, probably as a six year old guy, it'd probably be more fascinating, but I guess the associate lockstep programming of those law firms was a turn off for me, and so thankfully, I knew myself well enough. I went home Thanksgiving of 1986 and told my mother that I was going to quit Harvard Law School. And my mother was like, right out of Moonstruck Alan. She said, I'm going to kill myself. And these Italian women are crazy. They go right to, I'm going to kill myself. And I'm like, forget it, Mom, going to finish law school. So I finished law school when I passed the bar, I ended up going to Goldman because I thought that was a more interesting job, and it was a higher paying job, and I wanted to pay off the school debt. And I used to tell you this story, because this is typically my mother. I was in Rosanna's Italian deli in our local town. I was ordering like a sub, you know, versano supremo, and I was walking at it with a sub, and like a yoo hoo. And Mrs. Casnda turns to me and she says, How's that law firm, Goldman and Sachs, I said, why? Mrs. C What are you talking about? The law firm? Your mother says, you're at a law firm, Goldman and Sachs. I'm like, oh, no, the law firms. And I call me. My mother, I'm like, ma Goldman, Sachs is not a lawful I'm embarrassed for you. I'm embarrassed for you that you're not a lawyer. And this is the type of family that I grew up in. And so she was telling her friends in the neighborhood that I was working at a law firm.
Alan Fleischmann
That's very funny, and please don't change my story. My story's got to be really known. I'm sorry, did you like, did you like Goldman, by the way? I mean, that wasn't law, that wasn't practicing law. It was different. But I imagine those early days also influenced you. I mean, again, you're, you're a million miles away from where you were from, from, but only around the corner. I'm curious about, like, risk, decision making under pressure, and leadership, anything there? Did you like it? How many years were you there?
Anthony Scaramucci
Well, listen, I love Goldman. Goldman, I was and he's had a lot of friends. From that experience, I know I was there for seven years. I love Goldman. I was very well paid. They took care of me. I learned so much about compliance and ethics and teamwork, and I always tell people, you know, one of the smartest decisions you can make in life, if you're working at Goldman Sachs, is to stay at Goldman Sachs because it's just a wonderful place to have a career. And some of my buddies that I started at, believe it or not, are still there, 3540, years later. But I always had the inkling to want to have my own business, and so that was part of my career goals. If you had seen my little blotter when I came out of law school, I had written down, I'm going to start my own business. And
Alan Fleischmann
Did you know what that business was? Wasn't 100%
Anthony Scaramucci
Sure, but I knew it was going to be in asset management, investment banking, something in finance, something on Wall Street. Because I was working at Goldman, I wanted to get experience there, and I wanted to start that business the day after I paid off my student debt. And so I paid my student debt off on Memorial Day weekend of 1996 and I left Goldman at the end of that year to start my first company, and it was hard, because I went from a very high paying job to a no paying job to build the business, but it's something I wanted to do. And by the way, one of my mentors that you may remember, Mario Gabelli, maybe, maybe not. But I had, I had lunch with Mario Gabelli, I was 30 years old, and he said, Hey kid. I said, Yes, Mary, she's got to leave. Goldman, I said, leave. Goldman, I'm doing very well here. Yeah. He goes, You got to leave. Goldman, you're not the right personality for Goldman, okay, you're too you know, out there you're going to have to shave the points off your elbows to fit into the corporate culture and, oh, by the way, Goldman's a young person's place. They're going to grind you out of there by the age 50. You're 30 now you think 50 is forever away, but 10 minutes from now, you're going to be 50. You're going to wish you were still working. And if you have your own business, you're going to have that flexibility, and you're going to still be able to work. And it really resonated with me for some reason, you know. And so I did it, you know,
Alan Fleischmann
And you and you and you and they idea of a business. Was that a business I know, like that became a sky bridge in your head? Or no. So it went to the Oscars first, right?
Anthony Scaramucci
Yeah, yeah. I started a company with Andy Bozar we called it Oscar Capital Management. It was Bozart and Scaramucci, so we were going to call it Bosker, but we decided to drop the B and call it Oscar. And you know, we were, I mean, it was a terrible name, by the way, because every meeting, we're like, Are you part of the Oscar Mayer Frankfurter company? I mean, you have an uncle Oscar Sesame Street. I mean, it was a terrible name, but anyway, we survived and thrived anyway, and we built a nice business. And Newberger Berman asked us to consider purchasing our business, and in 2001 we sold the business to them successfully, which was nice. It was a night. It was a nice sale for us. The investment bankers on that were guys at Merrill Lynch, which helped help me build a relationship with them, and then new burgers sold to Lehman Brothers Alan.
So now I was in 2003 at Lehman, working with Dick Fold and some of the guys over there, and that was a lot of fun for me. I learned a lot at Lehman. I liked Lehman, and this is a little bit of a cautionary tale about risk, because I always tell people, it's not the things that you're worried about that get you, it's the things that you believe with absolute certainty that you get wrong. Okay, and I'll just give you an example. So I'm leaving a great relationship with Dick Fold. I'm leaving Lehman. He's giving me $10 million of capital to put on their balance sheet to put in my fund. And I say, Dick, you know, I've got all this stock that I've accumulated between Neuberger, my sale of Oscar and Lehman, I'd like to keep the stock. I believe in you. I believe in the company. And he said, Well, we have a process there. We. To put it through the Management Committee. And the Management Committee said no, and so I had to sell my stock in April of 2005 at $45 a share Alan. The stock went from 45 to 90. There I was looking at it at 90. I wanted to stab my eyeball out with a butter knife. I was like a little but then a little while later, but then a little while later, it became the biggest bankruptcy, and still to this day, 17 years later, it's the largest bankruptcy in US history, and and I was, if you had talked to me in April of 2005 I would have said adamantly and with great certainty, okay, which is a sign of youthful arrogance, but I would have said with great certainty Lehman Brothers that's going to go to three, $400 a share. And so I got lucky when they flushed me out. And the the point that I'm making, it's not the things that you worry about Alan, because you typically will absorb that, you will have a calculation to handle that if something goes wrong, but it's the things you think are going to go right, or that you strongly believe in that can get you in the most trouble. And so, I mean, that's something I think you frankly, learned with some level of experience. And
Alan Fleischmann
How do you make sure that that's, you know, kind of indoctrinated in your day to day, or that's part of your condition yourself to always not get overwhelmed by where you I think of you as a very serious person. People don't always see that side of you. Always because you're so you're very good at lowering the barriers of entry to connect with you. It's one of your great gifts. But I see the very serious side of you. I also see the incredibly insatiable curiosity and interest in people, so that warmth comes out. That's why people like you'd
Anthony Scaramucci
Be incredibly nice to me today, we got to record this when I'm having a bad day. I'm going to listen back to you, Fleischman, but, but what I would what I would say to you, is that
Alan Fleischmann
To give you a worrier, by the way, you come across, but you do worry?
Anthony Scaramucci
Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, if you're, if you're a true stoic, you don't worry, right? But if you're a human being, guess what? Do you worry? And so, yes, I'm a worrier in certain ways, I guess. I guess I've trained myself not to worry about some of the things that I can't control. I don't overly worry about the direction of the market. I really can't control that. I have had some mechanisms in the portfolio, and some mechanisms in our business to have some shock absorption in terms of the volatility of a market cycle. But I think you're bringing up an interesting point. I think this goes back to leadership. I think you have to have a switch in your personality where you're seeking adaptation. You know you're talking to the Alan Fleischmanns about things, or you're talking to friends or the Saul gits about things that you don't have a license on intellectual you're not a monopolist on intellectual activity. You've got to go to other people and listen to them and be open minded to what they're saying to you, so that you can develop a wider aperture in terms of the way to look at something or look at life.
You know, I've been to, you know, I went to, we were talking about Michael Dell, you know, earlier, I went to the Allen and company Sun Valley Conference many years ago. I've been in a while, but many years ago, and Jeff Bezos was there, sort of these luminaries, though they call it billionaire summer camp. And I remember walking into the conference room and they were talking about stuff that didn't happen for five years, you know, it was AI or, you know, even back in the day, believe it or not, prior to Wi Fi, the evolution of what Wi Fi was going to be, or this technology here, The zoom and, and I said, Wow, I am really, you know, closeted up here. I'm really narrow minded. I'm at the bottom of the swimming pool trying to look at the galaxy, right? So what do I do? I go to conferences. You and I have met each other in Davos, at the World Economic Forum. I'll fly out to California and go to the Technomic Conference, which is an intersection of the economy and what's going on in technology. I may go to the consumer conferences in Vegas. I want to see what products are going to be out there for 2027 or 28 or, you know, if there's robotic technology that's not in my field of vision, I want to learn about it, because that's coming. You know, there's a there's a future that's being made for us right now where these products or this technology or this biotechnology is going to be in the mainstream in five short years, that if we know about it today, it'll make us better prepared as investors, will make us better prepared as parents. And so I always force myself into that intellectual curiosity zip code,
Alan Fleischmann
The places where you see the inventors and the creative and the curators of tomorrow, knowing that some of it doesn't work and what you won't see tomorrow, but our discussions that people are having, you can say you can be on the cutting edge of that. Yes,
Anthony Scaramucci
I was at an Alan and company conference where Bill Gates got up and said, we've created this thing called Xbox. And since you're here at Allen and company, we're going to send your family an Xbox. And I had one of the first Xboxes ever for my kids, probably worth money now, threw it in the you know, it's in a landfill somewhere, but, but, but the point I'm making is look at what Xbox that was probably the year 2000 and look at the Xbox ecosystem today. In 2025 so so again, compounding, compounding intellect, compounding capital, compounding life experience, but also generating some good karma, because when bad things happen to you. Alan, if you've generated some good karma, guys like you will call me. You know, when I got fired from the White House, you were one of the first people that called me. How can I help you? Is there something I can do for you, you know, and people remember that, you know, Michael Milken called me, hey. How are you, you know, something that you've always been good to me. Is there something I can do for you? You know, there are other people that are mean and crude and rough on people when they get their asses kicked, they have less people calling them. Your mother was really talking about your mom, right? Your mother was right when you're going up the ladder, be nice, because you're going to meet the same people on the way. Yeah, some of these cliches really are truisms. Or aphorisms about life, you know, so for me, I'm always trying to, well,
Alan Fleischmann
With you, there's an ingredient that I don't want to get lost. You know, when people often are being talked to, and you talk about this topic a lot, resilience, and how do you create a resilient life? You're pretty much telling people which I love, yeah, be resilient. Figure out that five are in you, but it's not you alone. It's how you treat other people, and it's how you interact with other people. Don't be isolated, don't be insulated. Reach out, be curious and be kind. And you will find that your resilience is a lot stronger, greater, more impactful, not just for what you build from the core, but what you build from your community?
Anthony Scaramucci
Yeah, exactly 100% you know, I'm a big believer in all that and and I'm also a big believer, you know, somebody said, you know, now I'm probably patting myself on the back, but I'll just say this, I was in a was in a restaurant, and a couple of guys came over to me, and they're like, mooch, you know, I watch you on Instagram. My buddies can't believe I'm in the same restaurant. I want to take a selfie with you. I said, Fuck, let's take that. Let's take the selfie. We're taking selfies. And the guy that I was with, he was like, you know, you give off a vibe of approachability. So they're coming over to take a selfie with you, and I'm like, well, that's what I want to be. You know, if they had the FT asked me to write, like, how I pack for business trips, and everybody packs differently. Me, I pack a walk in the closet. Fleischmann, okay, talking about health and beauty products, I mean, I gotta, I forget any travel and carry on is not even big enough for my hair products.
Alan Fleischmann
What's that? There's a reason why you look so young. You had
Anthony Scaramucci
A whole bunch of Fleischmann. The carry-on is not even big enough for the hair and beauty products that they carry in the bag, right? So I'm packing like a Louis Vuitton, like, walking in the closet, okay, every trip, even if it's a day trip, that's what I do. And then I wrote at the bottom, I said, Look, if you see me at the baggage claim waiting for this monstrosity to come out of the airplane, come over and say hello. I got people coming right? Mooch. I read that article. I'm coming over to say hello. You know, my point is that's the person I want to be. I don't want to be a wealthy guy, recluse somewhere where, you know, I think I'm more important than you because I didn't get raised
Alan Fleischmann
Like that, you know, or even give the false impression, because you think that's, you know, success needs to come with attitude, you know, where somebody walks over and you want to, I want to. I gotta show you that I'm put off by your coming over.
Anthony Scaramucci
I hate but by the way, I tell my kids that you know, you know, you know better than anybody. Yeah, let me tell you something else. You're also no worse than anybody. Okay, so treat people with dignity and respect and kindness. Okay? And be good to people. And if the people decide they don't want to be good to you, that's their issue. Let them deal with it.
Alan Fleischmann
That's right. I always say, walk in a room thinking everybody's going to be good, kind and thoughtful they they have to prove to you that that's not the case, you know, and then you could react and respond anywhere you want, especially in the service industry where, you know, I always think people are working so hard and it's so tough, and I know so many other other customers are so difficult. I just love to connect. Know their name, get to know them. Them. And for a long time, my daughters thought it was embarrassing. I think a little bit like, What are you carrying on there, dad? But now I think they actually love it, because they see that relationships are forged, and they see respect, and that's what you do. Tell us a little bit about if you had to describe the sky bridge today versus sky bridge five years from ago and five years from now, even be curious, you know, is it do you've been very entrepreneurial in your day, your day job, and then you've been entrepreneur in your your hobby jobs, you know, your influencer jobs, which I obviously they're, they're part of the same you have this podcast, and you're doing other things out there to, kind of, you know, share your best self. I'm just curious. Like when you think about five years ago and five years from now, are they very different?
Anthony Scaramucci
Well, I think that my return to sky bridge after leaving Washington, my ill fated long, your long journey to DC, exactly, my ill fates didn't wash when I came back to sky bridge. I mean, you
Alan Fleischmann
Almost sold sky bridge, if I recall, it was very quick. It was almost not there. Yeah,
Anthony Scaramucci
Yeah. We almost sold Skyrim, but they would have started another company. I mean, look, I mean, you know, you're, you're, you know. I mean, the honest thing about that conversation is, I started the company inside of sky bridge that I would have started if sky bridge got sold, okay? And what we did was we morphed elements of sky bridge into a digital asset company, and I got the religion on things like Bitcoin and Solana and some of the blockchain technologies. And I said, Okay, I don't want to be in the typewriter business, which is what we were in. And don't get me wrong, we sold a lot of typewriters in this country in the 1940s, 50s and 60s, and we still sell typewriters, but they're not being sold at the magnitude that they once were.
And so we have new technologies, new innovations. I took out a blank sheet of paper, turned to my partners and said, okay, if we were starting a business today, forget about our legacy businesses. What would be the business? You know, I only met Steve Jobs one time, and this was when he was very sick. Back in 2005 and again, I didn't really meet him, because he was speaking publicly and I was in the audience, but he said something that really resonated with me. He said, you know, who killed the iPod? That was me. I killed the iPod. I shot the iPod, and I put it in the iPhone, because I knew someone was going to do that. And even though it was a great product for us, and even though it was something that was phenomenal, you know, we had the technology to embed it in the phone. Why do you need to carry two devices? Boom, I shot it.
And I said to my staff, we got to think like Steve Jobs, what would you do if you could start over? Here's a blank sheet of paper. And the younger people, Alan said, well, we would be in Bitcoin. We'd be in digital assets. And the older people pooh poohed it. It says, Yeah, well, I'll channel Joe Biden. That's a bunch of malarkey, right? And then I looked at them, said, we're going to go in your direction. And we built a Digital Asset Fund. We built a digital asset business. I reoriented my conferences around digital assets, made them a little smaller, just decided that going with the less large scale and making them a little bit more exclusive, I think, would be more beneficial to our clients and the people that we hang out with, the delegates and so forth, and and that worked. Now it didn't look like it was going to work, you know, we launched into digital assets in 2020 and then it, then it cratered. You know, I was at an event yesterday. I said, Well, I was a genius, genius. In 2022 Bitcoin went from 16,000 to 69,000 and my clients were telling me I was a visionary. And then in 2000 started 2022 into 23 it went from 69,000 to 16,000 and those very same clients were firing me and calling me an idiot. And so you know, the moral of the story, I'm not a genius, I'm not an idiot. I'm somewhere in the middle. And these assets recovered, and we had done good fundamental research on them, and our company is in a different place today than it was five years ago. And by the way, you know, we are looking to do new things again. Right now. We've made some investments in AI. We've made some investments in late stage private companies that we think are about to go public. And so I would just tell people, as you speak, about neuroplasticity as a leader, being flexible and adaptive. We have to do that at the sky bridge to stay alive. It's not, not the same business that we started and Wolfgang Puck, the very famous, high profile chef, told me and really resonated with me, you know, sort of a Steve Jobs Wolfgang Puck moment, he said to me, yes, Spago started 45 years ago. I have renovated it. A restaurant every 10 years, and I've changed the menu every 10 years. People do not want to walk into a 1978 restaurant in 2025 and so Spago is still there. Spago is still doing well, but it's a totally different place than it was when I started it. And I think we have to think like that. And think of these great companies. Think of Microsoft, where it is today versus where it started. Or how about Apple computer, or Amazon, or Amazon, look at Amazon and move into web based services and the cloud and the studio now with MGM. And, you know, just think about all the things that those guys are doing, which is, you know, building on, you know. And by the way, think about Walt Disney. You know, Walt Disney died in 1966 if he returned to life today, could see the footprint that Disney has around the world and the theme parks and the explosion of intellectual property and so forth. So I'm a big believer in compounding, and I'm a big believer you have to stay in the game no matter what. You can't let yourself get juked out of the game. That's not to say that you can't accept failure. Once in a while, I've had products that didn't work. I've had to take a zero on them. I've admitted the failure, but I'm still in the game, creating a new product and trying to see if I can make it work in a different way. And that's, that's the process. You got to, you got to be in the game Alan. You can't let yourself get knocked out of the game, God forbid, you know.
Alan Fleischmann
And you got to, you know, have that insatiable appetite that nothing's beneath you as well. Which you do. I quite curious. I mean when you mentor, but also when you hire. What are the qualities you're looking for, because I'm a big believer that you, you know, you can find genius in lots of places, but you can't find devotion and and trust, you know, in every person. So I'm always looking for the person who's going to be the worrier or the warrior, the person who puts the extra hours in, and I'm, you know, and actually going to raise their hand, even if they don't know the answer. It's hard to find, how do you find that? How do you find the
Anthony Scaramucci
It's such a great question. So, you know, there's an X factor, you know, there's a, you know, you can sense somebody like, you know, you or me. If I had to chew through the wallboard at Goldman to figure out a way to be successful, I was going to do that. If I had a state until 2am I was doing that, if I, if I didn't do a spreadsheet properly, I was going to the top experts on spreadsheet construction, and I was figuring out, with their help, how is going to get the spreadsheet right? And, and, and there's a, there's an X factor, you know, it in your business, you know, and I'm certain of this, there's been moments in your business where you're very tired and you don't want to make the call, you don't want to take the trip or make the sales call or the client call, but you say to yourself, I got to do it. I got to get up. I got to go do it, because it's the differentiator.
And by the way, it's a 1% thing, the monumental difference, but just being 1% better than everyone else, or 1% more willing is monumental, and you got to make it in your brain. And I'm sure you said this to your kids, I'm sure you think about this and say, It's your employees. We just want it. We want to push ourselves, make the extra call, go on the extra trip, visit the extra client, do the extra solicitation, because you know it is life as you and I know it, and as entrepreneurs, we know it's a numbers game. I'm gonna get told no, I'm gonna get denounced. If you're high profile like me, you get really nasty things written about. You have to be able to slake it off. But the truth, the truth of the matter, is, if you're in the game and you keep working, you're just around the corner from a yes after you've gotten 10 nos, that's right. I think, you
Alan Fleischmann
Know, there's things you got to do, and I think your kids hopefully appreciate it. I think my daughters do. I think there are moments where I feel like I was, you know, traveling, or had a thought that something happened on a Wednesday that I would love to have been there, but I needed to be, you know, elsewhere, because you got to show up. And now that they're 18 and 21 and looking at life through the college lens and beyond their their work ethic is very, very competitive with their debt and their mom, and they see that, and they're like, Wow, okay, you know, I get it. You can't always do what you want, you know, for the personal when you want to really fight hard for the professional too? Well said. Yeah, that's right. I think it's cool. I mean, when you, when you look at, like, what's out there right now on the horizon, you're very focused on, you look at AI for example, are you a pessimist, an optimist around artificial intelligence? I'm curious.
Anthony Scaramucci
Well, you know, listen, I generally am an optimist, but I don't like just being pollyannish with people. I think that there's when people are overly optimistic or overly exuberant. I see caution. There, I like to see myself as a realistic optimist. I think the first thing I would say is I'm betting with civilization. I'm betting on innovation. I'm betting with us getting things right. And I also believe that if you think about your brain, your brain is 100,000 years old. A piece of machinery has not had a software upgrade in 100,000 years, the phone went from iPhone 17, went from one to 17 in 15 years. But your brain is the same brain that the caveman was painting on the walls with. So what is it about your brain? Your brain is very linear in terms of the way it thinks it's part of your survival mechanism. And so we get things wrong.
Tom Malthus said, the British economist, we're going to run out of food. He missed vertical farming. He missed irrigation, fertilizers, all that stuff. We have more food now. We have more people. Prior to ozempic Allen, we have more people dying of obesity related illnesses than we did starvation. But in 1840 Malthus said we were going to starve. Same thing with oil. We said when I was in school tufts we were gonna run out of oil. It was called Peak Oil theory, but we developed fracking. We made more energy efficient rockets, energy efficient generators. We have more oil now than we know what to do with. So when people get apocalyptic on AI, I don't see it that way. Now. I'm a realist. I'm not saying there's not going to be problems with AI. I'm not saying that our adversaries are not going to use AI in a way that could be disruptive or potentially hurtful to us, but I'm a big believer in human innovation, and I'm a big believer in long term, human beings will get things right. You know, we have episodic periods of authoritarianism and fascism in countries. We know that throughout history, but the general path, at least here in the West, the general path, has been to extend individual freedom and to create environments of meritocracy, and I think that'll be applied to AI. Do believe that we'll have enough checks and balances in the AI equation to protect human beings from the worst aspects of AI. And I think that the productivity lift from AI and the things that are going to potentially happen over the next five or 10 years will be amazing for the world. The big question politically will be, well, will we be able to deepen the wealth because we do have a concentration issue.
Now I'm a big believer that if you have capital being economic, rent is going to capital and labor at roughly 50/50. Society is typically very happy. It's skewed slightly towards capital right now. And you can actually feel the strain in this society and you can feel levels of income inequality that I personally don't like. I don't want to be a rich guy living in a barbed wired security perimeter McMansion while my fellow neighbors are suffering. I'm just not up for that. I would rather figure out ways to help the people around me have really good living standards and have them feel aspirational about themselves. And I think that's something we have to think about with the invocation of AI and these other products. But generally, I'm optimistic, cautiously optimistic, realistically optimistic. Not a pollyannish person.
Alan Fleischmann
No, I love that. I think it's important. I think we have to figure it out also, because, you know, how do you make sure that we don't lose our creativity? You know, young people in particular, have the opportunity to be entrepreneurial and creative. And if all the answers are going to be on chat, GBT, or you name your platform, you know, is that going to allow people to continue to, you know, kind of search their own soul for something that's actually creative, and add that to that, you know, to a greater life. I think that's the biggest threat as well, not just the fact that we gotta limit, you know, the power of these, you know, this technology and this innovation both one last words, if there's a book or a something that you would want, including your own book, which from last year, is there, is there something you'd want to leave our listeners to kind of order. I think your book is a great book. For example, from last year.
Anthony Scaramucci
I'm not going to recommend my own book, but I appreciate your kind words about my book. But I, you know, we mentioned meditations, I think that's a mission critical book for people to read the, you know, the current translations, I think are fantastic, by the way, is –
Alan Fleischmann
Is there one in particular that's a great translation?
Anthony Scaramucci
Yeah, I have to look it up. You'd have to give me a second. But I would say that Greg Hayes is the translation. But let me, let me get it on my phone, but, but I would say the the best book I've read about American business recently is Apple in China, by Patrick McGee, I think it's a great story, evolutionary story of Apple, but it's also a story about the Chinese Communist Party and how aggressive they were with Apple, and it's a story about supply chain and the the. Whether you like the Chinese or you don't like the Chinese. We are conjoined with the Chinese. We need each other, whether we like it or not, and we got to stay. We got to stay with each other and try to fix things, in my opinion. But one of the things that Patrick brings up in the book, which I think is very relevant and worth mentioning, is that they were way better. They were way better at adapting, transforming and making our technology better, okay, than we thought. We thought we were going to use them for manufacturing facilities, but there was a very big technology transfer, if you will, that has provided an economic growth engine for them. So the translation is by Gregory Hayes, H, A, y, E, S, that's probably the best one. I've read the book many times, but I think that that's the most contemporary translation of that message. And by the way, people probably know this, but it's worth saying. The Great General wrote these words. He told his slave that it was upon his death to burn them. He taught the slave how to read, though, and so the slave read the meditations this sort of personal diary. He said, Okay, these words are too beautiful. The concepts are too incredible. I'm going to preserve them and see if we can replicate them. When the Gregorian monks got a hold of it, they did infuse a lot of Judeo, Christian, but mostly Catholic dogma, into the book. So it's altered slightly from what is probably really said. But still, it's, it's phenomenal way to think about things.
Alan Fleischmann
Love that next time we talk about, talking about the Museum of the American Revolution, which I'm on the board of and very active, and getting you involved in that, because we're celebrating our 250th and I think stoicism and a lot of the that inspired our founding mothers and fathers of this country actually are principles of a great importance that we need, that we need not lose that.
Anthony Scaramucci
Well, we have to remember what they were trying to achieve, right? I mean, so it's, you know, meet Jim's out with a new book on recasting the Federalist Papers and Jill la pours out with the constitutional history and what they were really trying to achieve, which you and I are direct beneficiaries of, as a flat system, they saw totalitarianism, autocracy, monarchical control as a funnel that fed the top, okay, and it was brazen, and it left the laws to be more arbitrary and more capricious and more suspect to the leader, as opposed to A predictable judicial process. And so we have to remember that about America. You know, the checks and balances save us. Checks and balances make us free. Said differently. Cicero once said about the Roman Republic, were slaves to the law in order to be free. And so when we have, I'm sorry, that's beautiful. I love it. So yeah, when you have you have you have rises of authoritarianism or autocracy. You have to remind people that their best path is to have a decentralized government that works for them, and even though it's messy, and even though it's not going to give you exactly what you want, there'll be a series of compromises and liquidation of their ideas. So what 's the best path? As Churchill said, you know, democracy is the worst form of government, until you consider all the other forms of government. And so I hope this 250th anniversary of America inspires people to rethink the revolution and the ideas behind the Declaration of Independence and the Federalist Papers and and the original charter, the original idea behind the Constitution.
Alan Fleischmann
And I urge people to kind of go back and read some of the books you just mentioned. They're brilliant there, and they give you a contemporary lens into what matters. And then also to go visit the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia. There you go, and there you go. This has been really great, Anthony, you've been listening to leadership matters on Sirius XM and on leadership matters show.com, I'm your host. Alan Fleishman, we just spent the last hour. We could spend the next hour with Anthony Scaramucci, the founder of sky bridge capital. Anthony has been a pleasure having you on this show. It's been an amazing conversation, as I knew it would be, but this intersection of who we are as individuals and how we actually manifest and share ourselves in public life and in business is a topic that we need to keep refocused on.
Anthony Scaramucci
And I greatly appreciate the opportunity, and I hope we'll do a home and away. You'll come on my podcast. I would love that.
Alan Fleischmann
I'd love to do more and more of these with you. Thank you.