Scott Galloway’s ‘The Algebra of Happiness’
Scott Galloway is an entrepreneur and Professor of Brand Strategy at the New York Stern School of Business.
I recently completed his second book the ‘The Algebra of Happiness’ where he talks about his experiences and principles for a happy life that is well lived.
It’s an awesome read.
Here’s a flavour of the principles that got me thinking:
Sweat more than you watch other people sweat
The ratio of time you spend sweating to watching others sweat is a forward looking indicator of your success.
Someone who watches champions league every week night, all weekend watching Soccer Saturday and Super Sunday, and doesn’t work out, is on course for a future of anger and failed relationships.
Someone who sweats everyday and spends more time playing sports than watching them, is on course for a happier life.
Rich = money in — money out
Your income vs expenditure is a guiding light to how you will feel.
If you earn £10k a month but burn 90% of that on a ridiculous apartment rent, expensive lease car and lavish consumer goods, then you are less likely to be happy than someone earning considerably less.
Show us a man earning £3k a month but only spending half of that and saving the rest — they will be mentally much richer.
Don’t become a servant to your lifestyle and stressed for the day the music might stop.
Keep control of your costs.
Get the small stuff right
You can be smartest, most insightful fucker in your office building, deliver killer presentations to clients and win lot’s of business.
But if you are late to meetings, rude to people along the way and don’t follow up, then you are in fact a dick. There will never be any hiding from that fact.
Show up early. Have good manners. Don’t be a dick.
IF you’re young, get to the city
The second best indicator of a successful career behind the university and degree you achieved, is the city that you choose to live in. Size matters.
London > Leeds. The higher the population, the greater talent, economic activity and opportunity you expose yourself too.
But size isn’t everything. Silicon Valley > Thames Valley. Get yourself closest to the geographical centres of wealth creation for the next 15 years (the last being Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook in California). Find your California.
Great vacation > great watch
Possessions won’t define or improve your sense of fulfilment. Seek experiences over objects. That week in Portugal with the family > over that Rolex Watch.
Looking back the experiences will be what you remember.
Balance is a myth
If you know someone who holds down a good day job, runs a breakout food blog in the evenings, has an eclectic social life + finds time to attend yoga class 5 times a week, then great. But assume you are not that person.
At some point in your life you will have to work very hard to be successful and aspects of your life will suffer or take a back seat. That is ok.
Just make sure you acknowledge the fact.
There is also no better time to push the limits than when you are young with limited commitments.
You are probably not Mark Zuckerburg
We are living in an age of entrepreneur and hustle porn. Everyone wants to start a business and people on instagram makes it look easy.
The reality is most businesses fail.
There are four tests you should check before embarking on a journey as an entrepreneur:
- Can you sign the front, not the back, of checks?
- Are you comfortable with public failure?
- Do you like to sell?
- How risk aggressive are you?
Read the book for the detail on them all, but as a salesperson, the selling analogy is one I particularly enjoyed:
The word ‘entrepreneur’ is a synonym for ‘salesperson’.
Selling people to join your firm, selling them to stay at your firm, selling investors, and (oh yeah) selling customers. It doesn’t matter if you’re running the corner shop or a FTSE 100 business, you better be damn good at selling if you plan to start a business.
Selling is calling people who don’t want to hear from you, pretending to like them, getting treated poorly, and then calling them again.
You might, incorrectly, believe the collective genius of your firm should mean the product sells itself, and sometimes it will. You might think that there is a product out there that doesn’t require you to get out the spoon and publicly eat shit over and over. Actually, no there isn’t.
Google has an algorithm that can answer anything and identify people who have explicitly declared an interest in buying your product, then advertise to those people at that exact moment.
Yet Google still has to hire thousands of attractive people with average IGs and exceptional EQ to sell the shit out of… Google. Entrepreneurship is a sales job with negative commissions until you raise equity, are profitable, or go out of business — whichever comes first.
The good news: if you like to sell and are good at it, you’ll always make more money, relative to how hard you work, that any of your colleagues, and… they’ll hate you for it.
Serendipity is a function of courage
Alcohol serves a purpose.
After a couple of drinks we are funnier, more affectionate, confident, engaged, nicer… better versions of ourselves. Alcohol gives us courage to approach the opposite sex in bars and nightclubs. Alcohol helps you to take risks and get ‘lucky’.
Your ability to channel confidence and take risks when not relying on alcohol, will also increase your chances of getting ‘lucky’.
Asking for a raise, a date, an opportunity.
Fear of rejection is a bigger obstacle to success than lack of talent or opportunity.
Have courage.
I don’t know if Scott said this, but I am also reminded of a similar quote I once heard in the same spirit: ‘The more I became comfortable with uncomfortable conversations, the greater success I began to have’.
Success = Relisilience / failure
Everyone will experience failure and tragedy in their lives. You will get fired or lose people you love. The key to success is the ability to mourn and then move on.
Get up and go again. And again. And again.
For the rest, I really recommend you check out the book here. It’s an awesome and quick read.
Enjoyed This?
This post was originally written for the Digital Evolution newsletter.
Check it out here: https://digitalevolution.substack.com/welcome
Follow Callum on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/McdonnellCallum
