How to Build Wealth (And Survive Failure) with Anthony Scaramucci

**Anthony Scaramucci** (0:00)
And I remember being long, and defiant, and very wrong. You know, I had the worst year of my career.
And so I have gotten things wrong. So I've been humbled by life and humbled by markets, but I see the specter of deflation as being a forward trend that I'm more worried about than short-term inflation. So I don't look at the near-term stuff as much as I used to, and I'm not as focused on it. I think I would caution younger investors that listen to your show to try to think way longer-term. I think these are mistakes that I made in the early part of my career that I wish haven't served me well. You know, too impetuous, too knee-jerky, selling at bottoms and buying at tops and doing all the classic mistakes that you'd expect from human nature. You know, if you're taking exogenous risk, and I had to take exogenous risk as a kid to get to where I am, expect that your ass is going to get kicked. And so don't be a baby about it and don't play the victim. You know, when they fired me from the White House, I got torched by everybody. I got torched by the media, late night television. Did I care? No, I went on those shows, faced the music, and never played the victim. So you've got to have that mentality if you're going to take risk. If you're not comfortable with that, then don't do it.

**Wilfred Frost** (1:23)
Welcome to The Master Investor Podcast with me, Wilfred Frost, where we celebrate and learn from the success of the greatest investors, business leaders, and politicians in the world, giving you, our listeners, the edge. The Master Investor Podcast is sponsored by ELSEG, Interactive Brokers, The World Gold Council, and BNY Investments.
Please do remember the views expressed in this podcast are for general information purposes only. Nothing in the podcast constitutes a financial promotion, investment advice, or a personal recommendation. More on that in the show notes.
My guest today is the founder and CEO of SkyBridge Capital and the host of the SALT conferences. He's also a restaurateur as well as prolific broadcaster and podcaster, and of course, also briefly, the former White House Communications Director for President Trump. Of course, talking about Anthony Scaramucci. Anthony, welcome to The Master Investor Podcast.

**Anthony Scaramucci** (2:21)
It's great to be here.

**Wilfred Frost** (2:22)
It's a real privilege to have you with us.
I listed some of the things you do there. Podcasting, you've got The Rest is Politics US, you've got Open Book, you've got All Things Markets, you've got a new book coming out, All the Wrong Moves, How Three Catastrophic Decisions Led to the Rise of Trump. Publishing date, September 22nd in the US, September 17th in the UK, I like that. Comes out here first.

**Anthony Scaramucci** (2:48)
Yeah, I mean listen, I've got great publishers both sides of the Atlantic, and I try to encapsulate my 38-year observation as a Wall Streeter, but also a participant in the political system, some of the things that we did that didn't go well. And by the way, it's not an indictment of anybody, it's just more a story of good and well-intended people, making bad policy decisions that lead to this rise of populism, and also this anger-based movement in our two populations, where there's a very large group of people in the UK and in the United States that are upset, which is why you're seeing this turnover in your system, and it's why you're seeing this rise of left-leaning and right-leaning populism in the United States.

**Wilfred Frost** (3:35)
Well, I hope you'll come back on when the book is out on the Sky News program as well. That would be great. But my first question on this is, how on earth do you fit all of this in?

**Anthony Scaramucci** (3:45)
Well, you know, I am a big believer in, you know, I told Tony Pastore who is one of the founders of Goldhanger, I'm a big believer in what's called servant leadership. I think I read that book about 20 years ago and decided I was going to implement that, and it's been successful for me. So I have a group of people that are running our conference business, a group of people that run our funds business. I have a production team that runs the podcast for us, it also does a lot of the social media, so the clips and things like that, that you may see of us are generated by a young group of people.
And then I have a whole dedicated team to what I would call the cryptocurrency and the blockchain space, all in the envelope of SkyBridge. And so I see myself, Wilf, as somebody that works for and with these other people, meaning if the guy running our salt conference needs me to do something, I'm there for him. If he's reporting to me on what he's doing, I'm okay with his mistakes, I'm okay with his risk taking. And I think that's more or less worked for us over the year. So it's freed me up to do some of the things I like, which is podcasting and writing and hanging out with you. And so that's sort of the thing. By the way, you talk about Master Investors. Warren Buffett is a big believer in that. Just think about the businesses that he owns inside of Berkshire Hathaway and how successful he's been at delegating to people at Geico or people at Seas Candy or the different things that he has in his holding company.