In his last interview, Scott Adams talks about the organic evolution of his podcast “Coffee with Scott Adams” from a Periscope experiment to a multi-platform daily show with over 3,000 episodes. Adams discusses his symbiotic bond with listeners, viewing the show as a mutual benefit rather than a duty, and fostering a community of “internet siblings.”
The interview covers Adams’ admiration for fellow podcasters like Megyn Kelly, praising their skills, trust and entertainment value. Adams analyzes Donald Trump’s 2028 election troll as strategic opportunism, while sharing persuasion tips for underdogs negotiating with power players. Personal reflections include unbuilt business ideas, America’s entrepreneurial spirit, his non-religious stance amid fan prayers, and profound impact on followers’ lives.
Scott Adams last interview
Scott Adams returns to The Paul Leslie Hour!
Are you here? Buckle up for episode 1,092 of The Paul Leslie Hour—your rendezvous of unfiltered observations, humor, and thought-provoking chats that shift your worldview. We’ve got behind-the-scenes scoops, examinations on creativity and culture, and conversations that linger long after they end.
We’re thrilled to welcome back a fan-favorite for round two: the renowned cartoonist, best-selling author, and sharp-witted commentator who’s predicted trends, parodied office life, and sparked debates with his bold takes on persuasion, success, and politics.
Ladies and gentlemen, it’s the one and only Scott Adams!
Follow Scott Adams on X: @ScottAdamsSays
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Last Interview with Scott Adams Transcript
This is a verbatim transcript of my interview with the late Scott Adams, the influential podcaster, author, and creator of Dilbert. Scott passed away on January 13, 2026, but his insights and wisdom continue to resonate.
Paul Leslie:
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome, welcome all. It is my great pleasure to welcome for the second time, Scott Adams, the most influential podcaster of our time. The commentator Cernovich called him the most interesting man on the internet, which is an interesting thing to say because everybody’s on the internet these days. He’s a bestselling author. I’d like to hold up two books that I highly recommend to everybody: Reframe Your Brain, How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big. And as many of you know, he is also the host of Coffee with Scott Adams, which the only thing more impressive than surpassing 3,000 episodes is 3,001 as of today. Our friend Jay Plemons commented that that is about 15.85 gallons of sips. So Scott Adams, such a pleasure to talk to you again.
Scott Adams:
Thanks for having me again. That’s a lot of sipping.
Paul Leslie:
That’s a lot of sipping and I’ve been pleased to be able to be sipping to so many of them but not all 3,000, I’ll admit. You know, it occurs to me that your show is very, very much, it’s undeniably different from other podcasts. It feels different, there’s a very different tone to it.Would you say is it by design or is it just kind of a natural evolution that’s happened?
Scott Adams:
Well, those are maybe not different things. Part of my design process is letting things just unwrap the way they should unwrap. So it all started one day when there was the old Periscope app on Twitter. And you could do a little video with your handheld phone. And I just turned it on one day to see what it was all about. And maybe five people joined me or something. And I thought, that’s cool.Cool toy. So I told some of my other audience about it and did it again and you know pretty soon there were a hundred people but it was just me with a very bad technology with no real plan. I just turned it on and started talking and I do it for as long as I wanted whenever I wanted. You know, there was no structure to it. But people liked it.So my design process is I try a lot of things that was just one of probably a dozen different things that I may have tried just that year. Just to see if there’s any, gets any traction. And it did.So incrementally, and without having any grand plan, I would make little improvements. Pretty soon I had an iPad instead of a phone. Next thing you know you get a microphone. Then you think, well, why don’t I stream this on other platforms? Then you’ve got two devices and then Rumble comes up with the Rumble Studio so you can do multiple platforms from one feed.Then you teach yourself how to do that and then you get some ring lights and you teach yourself how to do the lighting. So it’s sort of part of it. I’m an autodidact. I like just figuring out stuff that I haven’t done before. So part of it is it borders on hobby. If I buy a new mixer and try to figure out all the audio engineering of it. I’m kind of having fun if it works out. Otherwise I’m doing a lot of swearing.But so I took the direction of what the audience told me they liked and I did more of that and less of what they didn’t like. And then I started getting more prepared because the audience was bigger. So you just feel that extra responsibility. It’s like it’s not a hundred people. Now it’s you know maybe ten thousand people watching live.
Scott Adams:
And then maybe 100,000 watching it recorded. So it makes me think, hmm, maybe I should raise my game a little bit. Then you experiment with different takes and find out what is your audience like? If I come at it from the persuasion angle, do they like that best? And the answer is yes.And then it sort of crafts itself over time, just because I literally do it live, so the comments are going as I talk and I can see if they like it or don’t like it. Because they’re pretty brutal if they don’t like it. So I can immediately switch.So I’ve got this symbiotic situation with my audience, because I almost always do it live, that I don’t know that the other podcasters get if they record it and then just play it back.
Paul Leslie: Yeah.
Paul Leslie:
You use this word symbiotic. I recall after Charlie Kirk was assassinated, right after, you went live and you said, I just wanted to be there for you all. I wanted to, you know, like, I just want you to not be alone. And it made me think, wow, it really struck me and it touched me as well.But do you feel a sense of duty to your audience, is it more than just, you said it was a hobby, but would you call it even a duty?
Scott Adams:
I wouldn’t like using that word for something that I see as in the social domain. Duty implies some negativity, I think. You like you have to do it whether you want to do it or not. My situation is I do it when I want to do it. So I’m as much a recipient of the benefit as the audience. And that’s the part where it’s symbiotic.It’s good for me, it’s good for them. So I do it. That’s about the extent of that thinking.
Paul Leslie:
Hmm. Well, I was speaking with Joshua Lisec recently and he told me that if you’re the internet dad, then your listeners are all kind of like internet siblings. And I thought that that’s interesting. But I do feel this kinship with other people who listen. And yeah.
Scott Adams:
They say the same thing, yeah. They all say that.
Paul Leslie:
What do you make of that connection? The connection that we all have with one another as listeners?
Scott Adams:
Well, again, it wasn’t something I planned. It was the nature of the live stream. So if the same people showed up at the same time, they’d recognize each other in the comments and then they would start sort of making friends.And then there were a few people. I won’t name names in case they don’t want me to, but there were some people who became sort of celebrities within the chat group and others. Others like that situation because they gave them almost like a structure, like there was somebody to complain to. There was somebody they knew they could talk to who would always get back to me if it was important.So it just sort of spontaneously created what the audience wanted.
Paul Leslie:
Well, it’s a really nice thing. And for the record, because people have asked me quite a few times, I am not the Paul that’s mentioned at the beginning. That is not me. People do ask me that though. But Joshua, he had a question and I thought this is a good one.What’s a book that needs to be written but hasn’t been written yet?
Scott Adams:
Ha. He would ask that. You know, maybe that’s the hardest question to answer if you’re an author because you would have already written it if you felt that strongly about it. So literally nothing jumps to mind. I’ll just make, let me make a larger comment about books, which I think might get to the answer.Lots of times it’s not about the idea for the book.
Paul Leslie:
Hahaha.
Scott Adams:
It’s the execution. It’s who’s writing it. Is it the right time for that book? Does the world need it? So obviously, I would say my book, Reframe Your Brain, was in the right time for the right need. But that’s why I wrote it.If I were to write one today, see, I’m kind of stalling because I want to be able to answer that question. But it’s like the hardest question in the world. So I’m like, if I keep tap dancing here, I might come up with something. If I were going to write that book…
Maybe something like hypnosis for couples, where only one of them is the hypnotist. Because it’s provocative and you would learn a lot about hypnosis and how the brain works and stuff, just sort of walking somebody through the idea of it.What if you trusted your partner so much that you would let them tinker with your brain for mutual benefit? There’s no winner or loser. It’s more like a coach saying, well, if I could coach you out of, say, my anxiety or whatever it is that’s bugging you, would you be up for that?Usually doesn’t work with couples. That’s one of the limitations of hypnosis, because you have too much baggage of your understanding of the hypnotist. It’s better if the hypnotist is just somebody you paid.
Paul Leslie:
Mm-hmm.
Scott Adams:
A couple hundred dollars to spend an hour with or whatever.
Paul Leslie:
Well, shifting gears just a bit here, Scott.What do you admire most in another person?
Scott Adams:
I tend to be impressed by effort and of course character. And if you put those two together, usually somebody gets a pretty good result. So hard work just always impresses me.And my general feeling is I came from a modest country upbringing where we did every kind of physical labor you could ever do for money. So to me all work is sacred and it doesn’t matter what it is if it needs to get done it’s sacred, it has to be done.So yeah I think just putting in the work is what impresses me the most.
Paul Leslie:
Hmm. Good answer. Well, I’d like to talk about some of your podcast peers. Now, a lot of people listening are probably saying, Scott has no peers, but what podcasters out there do you trust? Who do you think is the creme de la creme?
Scott Adams:
Well, it’s interesting you’d use the word trust because a lot of the podcasts I watch for the entertainment value, not because I think they’re going to change my mind. So, you know, do I get entertainment from watching Candace Owens pursue a hypothesis that on the surface seems, you know, just mad, but then she goes down the path and you’re like, oh, that kind of made sense. And then all of a sudden you’re having fun.You’re not necessarily embracing whatever it is she may be focusing on, but you’re just having a good time. So that I love. Tucker, same thing. I’ll listen to Tucker talking about aliens and interdimensional beings all day long, because he’s just great. He’s just great at what he does. But if you’re talking about trust, Megyn Kelly is very high on my list, because she’s got the full talent stack.The legal, the podcasting, the government stuff, basically everything, and has a good track record of being straight with her audience, so I’d put her right near the top.
And I think the Daily Wire guys are great. Again, it’s not for me to agree with them, but if I’m watching, if I’m watching Matt Walsh do an hour that looks like he doesn’t use notes and the whole time I’m just sort of so impressed at the level of skill he brings to the job that it almost doesn’t matter what he’s talking about.
He’s that good. So you can enjoy the podcast on kinds of different levels, but credibility Do you have a name you want to bounce off me anybody you wonder if I think they’re credible again I’ll get in trouble here.
Paul Leslie:
Well, they’re-There’s one person that you mentioned here, and just in preparing for this interview, I have watched pretty much every Scott Adams interview known to man. I’ve really dug, and I have to say, the one that kind of, to me, I was like, this was a good interview. She did a great job. And we are living in the era of Megyn Kelly. I mean, she is, it’s amazing what she’s done, and it just seems like she’s getting bigger. On a personal note, I just won tickets to see her live.
Scott Adams:
Fun.
Paul Leslie:
But she’s become a juggernaut. What do you think makes her so effective?
Scott Adams:
Doing everything better than everybody else. That’s it. No, obviously she has, I mean, I can’t know this because I’m not close enough to it, but she must have some business sense, even if it’s just making sure that the right business people are working with her, because everything looks like the right move. She’s got the right, just her talent stack is from top to bottom. She never repeats a word. She doesn’t.
Paul Leslie:
That’ll do it.
Scott Adams:
She never bores. She makes every topic sound interesting, which is really hard. She’s got the look, she’s got the production crew. What doesn’t she have? She’s got the full clip factory. That stuff doesn’t happen by itself. That’s all her.
Paul Leslie:
Yeah. You know…I was talking to a guy not long after Trump’s re-election, a guy who—he doesn’t want to be named, but he’s a pretty big person in politics. And he was telling me that everything opened up with Trump. And he said, Paul, gone are the days where you can’t talk to somebody that you’re interested in because other people won’t talk to you. That’s all gone. What do you think of that kind of take?
Scott Adams:
Well, I don’t get out of the house much lately, so I haven’t noticed the difference. So it’s just saying that you can talk to people romantically or talk to people just in general.
Paul Leslie:
I assumed that he meant like, you know, there was this period of time when people were using this verb and Tucker has talked about this a lot, the use of platform as a verb, where somebody says like, you platform this person. And to this guy’s point, like after Trump won, you see mainstream people like Bill Murray going on Joe Rogan. Whereas before he was kind of like in persona non grata, but it seems like everything’s opened up.
Scott Adams:
Yeah.
Scott Adams:
Yeah, that I’ve seen, absolutely. Yeah, just see who’s cross pollinating whose podcast. There are some people who are, I would say, doing more to make that happen than other people. You know, your comic Dave Smith, you know, be willing to platform with, know, Fuentes, doesn’t have to agree with them. That’s not what it’s about. But just the fact that he’s making it safe. You know, just make it safe for other people to.Cross pollinate a little bit because I feel like if you’re not seeing what everybody’s saying, at least the big influential people, if you’re not seeing what the influential people are saying, you kind of don’t know what’s going on. So the whole thing about needing to agree with them to be on the show or agree with them to watch it, I feel like that’s sort of passe. There was a time not too long ago during the firstTrump election where I would, I felt I often needed to say, even without any prompting or anything in my life that would suggest I needed to say it, I would say, just need to tell you that I reserve the right to have contact and communicate with anybody. And you’re never gonna change that. So I was saying it preemptively, because I knew sooner or later I’m gonna talk to somebody, then somebody says, you can’t talk to them. And then I’m gonna say, all right, for five years I’ve been telling you.I can talk to anybody I want. You can do what you want, but I’m going to talk to anybody I want. You don’t get to restrict that.
Paul Leslie:
Something I’ve noticed on your show is that you, I don’t know if this is intentional or not, but you will give like a little nugget and then a question will pop into my mind. I’ll think, I wonder what Scott thinks about this. And the next day you will usually answer that question. So I’ve been wondering, you know, about this Trump 2028 thing. I thought, I wonder what Scott, like if it became somehow possible.
Scott Adams:
Yeah.
Paul Leslie:
How would he respond to the idea of Trump being on the ballot in 2028? And you answered that question today. But I’m wondering, what do you make of this as just the world’s biggest troll of all time? And it’s just a way to just really—because if you think this is the end of your world with Trump being in office, if you’re like an older brother tormenting his younger brother or younger sister, it’s like—Well guess what? There’s more coming. You know what I mean?
Scott Adams:
Well, you know, I always talk about Trump never leaving money on the table. If it’s just laying there and nobody’s claiming it, he’s like the only person who seems smart enough to just pick it up. And it reminds me that because on one hand, it’s the greatest troll of all time. And he loves that. It just it makes the Democrats worry about something that’s not real if it’s just a troll. But why wouldn’t he be open to the idea of it?
Paul Leslie:
Mm-hmm.
Scott Adams:
If the public, you know, let’s say, and I don’t think anything like this is gonna happen, but let’s say 70 % of the public just said, you know what, we want you for a third term. You did so good, and the person you’re running against, we just found out, or the person you potentially would run against, it was just so bad that, we want you. In the highly unlikely world where that could happen,Why not have the door open? It’s just free money. So when I look at him sort of preparing himself just in case somebody wants to give him some free money, that’s all I see. I don’t think he takes it seriously because there’s no real path and the only way there could ever be a path, and maybe this wouldn’t work either, is if something like a gigantic percentage of the public said yes, yes.We want a king and we want it to be you. After that, we’ll go back to the old way. We don’t want it permanently, right? It doesn’t pass to Don Jr. But just give us a few more years. If that happened, he’s ready. That’s not gonna happen.
Paul Leslie:
Would you ever invite him on Coffee with Scott Adams?
Scott Adams:
I’ve thought about it, but I don’t think it’s good for him. I don’t like to open up an attack factor. Although I believe that he might say yes, because he’s just not afraid of that stuff. But I wouldn’t want it to be me who caused a news cycle that wasn’t to his favor. And as much as I would enjoy it, I don’t know how much I’d add.He does a lot of talking in public. So he’s probably said everything he needs to say.
Paul Leslie:
Well, I feel like just by me asking, it makes it more of a possibility that it happens.
Scott Adams:
Well, remember, if I wanted it to happen, I could have pressed it. It wouldn’t have been that hard. And then I’d at least know if he was, you know, upward or not. But, you know, you may have heard the story that he called me at home not too long ago over the summer. So I know he knows I exist and he cared enough to place a personal phone call just to see how I was doing health-wise. So would he do an interview?
Paul Leslie:
Mm, right.
Scott Adams:
At least 50 % yes. I don’t know.
Paul Leslie:
Mm-hmm. Right. Even if just to see Gary or Roman, which is always a highlight of the show.
Scott Adams:
That’s Gary.
Paul Leslie:
The dopamine duo.
Scott Adams:
Better than looking at me.
Paul Leslie:
No.
Scott Adams:
Alright, we’ll go back to me. Back to me.
Paul Leslie:
This is a heck of a question to follow after asking about Trump. But what is most important in a person? Humility or confidence? Because you’re somebody that I see regularly. You have both of those things. But if you have to have one, what’s more important?
Scott Adams:
Humility or confidence, can you have them both?
Paul Leslie:
You can’t have them both for the purposes of the universe of this question.
Scott Adams:
I like to have them, well, I’ll take confidence if I can only pick one to stick with the frame of your question. But it seems to me that the right approach is confidence in things that you should be confident in and humility where that’s deserved. So no matter how awesome I believe I am at some handful of things, and I’m sort of lucky that I’m good at a handful of things.But there’s a lot more than a handful of things. There’s a lot more. The things that I sounded like Tucker Carlson there for a second, there’s a lot more. But for the things that I’m genuinely not good at, such as keeping my cats off my keyboard, humility seems called for.
Paul Leslie:
Well, you have mentioned and I’ve seen in some of your lectures or your public events, you’ve talked about how many different things you’ve tried. Is there anything that you have not pursued that you wanted to?
Scott Adams:
Oh, so many. So many, yeah. I’m obsessed by the idea of starting small businesses where I live that would be cool and people would like. Now, I’ve sort of timed out, so I’m not going to do these. But I always wanted to have a cat cafe, like long before you knew they were real. Probably 30 years ago, I was jabbering to my friends, it needs to be like a cafe, but it’s full of cats. And you just go there because you like cats.
Paul Leslie:
Yeah.
Scott Adams:
And I also wanted to start a ping pong emporium where you’d have high end ping pong tables. Later there was a, I think there’s a chain called Spin that actually did that. But again, that was like 25 years after I thought it’d be my best idea. And then I also wanted to do a driving range, a golf driving range that was associated with a dog park. And then also had maybe someplace you could get a coffee and…And plug in your laptop and have some Wi-Fi. So you sort of go there for the afternoon and you know, could hit some balls or work in your laptop, but your dog would be playing with the other people and other dogs. And this is that one. And then there was the retirement home that would be attached to two other businesses. One would be a storage business, because all the old people need to store their stuff.And the other would be a dog park or a dog boarding. So that the dogs would be brought by the owners in the morning. And then the old people would get to have the dogs playing around all day. And then the owners pick them up whenever they want to pick them up. And then my idea of the old folks home that’s built in sort of a horseshoe or has sort of a courtyard that’s a soccer field or a sports field. So it’s designed so all the old people can go out on their balcony.Facing that direction and watch, let’s say, high school sports. And then they would just have access to the field, because it just be a free field to play on. And there’d be like an announcer. So you’d really feel like you went to an event, but all you did is wheel your wheelchair out on your own balcony. You’re like Caesar’s Colosseum. You get to watch a game. And the announcer would be funny. So if you didn’t care about sports, it would be more about the announcer.So those are just a few of the about 400 ideas I’ve had that I thought, you know, wouldn’t that be fun?
Paul Leslie:
You have a great imagination. Do you tend to remember your dreams? You don’t?
Scott Adams:
I don’t dream. I don’t remember any dreams. One assumes I dream, but I don’t remember any dreams, I am a lifetime partaker in a now legal in California substance that eliminates dreams, let’s just say. I don’t miss them.
Paul Leslie:
I have sometimes the silliest dreams as like right as I’m waking up and I would like to tell you about a dream that I had that involved the coffee with Scott Adams universe. Okay, so this is just as I was waking up. I had this dream that you were doing a game show and you had all these different contestants and they all had very unusual last names like Cernovich and Gregorian andPlemons and Lisec, And you started out, and this is right when I woke up, you said, the coffee is real, the contestants are real, the news stories are total hoaxes. And then I woke up.Scott Adams:
This sounds like Greg Gutfeld’s game show on the Fox Nation.
Paul Leslie:
Yeah, maybe that’s where it blended together or something.
Scott Adams:
The contestants are locked away for a month, so they don’t know what is the real news And then the contestant has to guess if the madness was real or fake. Pretty good idea.
Paul Leslie:
Maybe it seeped into my subconscious or something. You have said a number of times on the show about the fact that you’re not a religious person, but I’ve heard so many people and so many people have told me again and again, they say, I’m praying for Scott with all the health stuff that you’re facing. I’m wondering, how do you respond to that? What is it like? Does it mean something to you when people are telling you they’re praying for you?
Scott Adams:
Totally, Somehow, I don’t think we understand how the universe is put together. So when I say I’m not religious, I’m not saying that I know what’s true and other people don’t. I’m not saying that. I don’t think anybody knows. I think that our brains did not evolve so that we know kind of base reality. We just all have a little movie we’re running around with. So if people are showing me kindness,By telling me that they’re praying for me, it’s the kindness that I can feel. And that’s very palpable. If there’s more to it, much like my earlier story about Trump, why wouldn’t I leave the door open? There might be something divine that I have not detected yet that would kick in any moment, and would be just, the timing would be really good for that if it kicked in. So I’m very,Very positive about religion because I simply observe and I think the science shows that people who have a religious lifestyle just do better. It’s just a better lifestyle. If I could imitate it, I would, but not everything works for every person. It has to fit you. So I just find it a compliment. I find it…I guess inspirational meaning it helps me helps me get to the next day knowing people care And if it does more than that, that would be great
Paul Leslie:
You were mentioning today, you were saying, you you’ve never said overtly, I’m a conservative or anything. You said, I tend to prefer being around conservatives. But it’s interesting to me that the people in the Scott Adams sphere, it seems like the most religious of the conservatives are people who really, really like you. Like Posobiec. You know, Cernovich is really religious.It’s interesting, isn’t it?
Scott Adams:
Well, but that would be true of conservatives. Mean, it’s hard to find many who are not. That’s one of the reasons I don’t like to brand myself as conservative, even if I’ve got a lot of overlap. But it’s more policy overlap, less lifestyle overlap.
Paul Leslie:
Is there a compliment that has meant the most to you through the years?
Scott Adams:
Probably. I feel like I was just thinking about this the other day. Let’s see if I can dredge this up. I remember, so years ago, there’s a show called Babylon 5. You ever heard of that? And I was invited on because they, long story, so I was invited on as like a, like a, a few lines.
Paul Leslie:
Mm-hmm, sure.
Scott Adams:
And so there was a little cast get together and then the Straszinski, R.J. Straszinski, the showrunner who wrote basically every episode. Had complimented him as a writer, which is, think, what got me invited on. And and he said, you know, brought everybody together. And it was sort of to, let’s say, call me out as being their guest.And he said that talking about himself, he says you’re not a writer until a writer says you’re a writer. And then he essentially he was saying that I had given him the sort of the Wizard of Oz compliment that he didn’t know he was a writer until I said he was a writer. And in the weird, weird world of writers, that came off as a really good compliment to me that that he thought I had the ability.To simply deign him a writer. And I thought, do I? Do I get to do that? It’s not just me, of course. But have I reached a level of writing where if I say you’re a writer, you’re a writer? Because I wasn’t aware of that. And so that always stuck with me as a great compliment, because he’s a great writer. Great writers can make great compliments, so that stuck with me.
Paul Leslie:
Hmm, that is a good compliment. We are going into the semi-quincentennial of America’s birth, 250 years. You’ve commented a number of times on the show that you are America’s first. This is the nation of your birth. Scott, what is America to you?
Scott Adams:
Well, I try not to be limited by things like dirt. This dirt is America. If you put one foot on this dirt, you’re on my soil. But of course, in the practical real world, you have to protect your dirt. So you need borders. You need good border security to protect your dirt. But when I think about America, I tend to think about more the idea of it, because the dimensions can change.You we can buy a new state if we need to. Maybe we’ll add Greenland someday. But I feel like the American spirit is quite different than other people’s spirit. The entrepreneurial thing, maybe our biggest superpower is that we can do things that would embarrass and shame us and then just get up the next day and do it again. Maybe something different. But we’re not stopped by embarrassment or shame.We’re not stopped by much. We’re a plucky kind of a people. But beyond that, one of the reasons I’ve been far more pro Mexican, pro south of the border, saying again that we need great border security, that’s a separate topic. But I love the people because they tend to be more American than the Americans. The Mexicans who come over, they love their God, their hard work.Their family. And that’s what they love. And so if that’s not American, what is? That’s sort of my prototypical perfect American. And they tend to be, they want to contribute, they want to be American, the ones I know anyway. They want to be on the team. So to me, that’s about as American as you can get. But I realize it’s a practical world and can’t let everybody in just because they have the right attitude.
Paul Leslie:
You said before that you think that you think differently and it does seem that you do. Can you give us an example of how you think differently?
Scott Adams:
Well, does everybody think differently? I guess the one way I think differently is maybe a minor version of what I’ve heard Elon Musk describe about his own inner thoughts, sort of a blizzard in there. He said explicitly, if you could trade places with me, maybe you wouldn’t, if you knew what’s in my head. Now, I don’t have that much action in my head.I don’t know if anybody else does. He’s a one-off. But there’s a lot going on in there all the time. And I don’t have a sense of how different that is, because you don’t know how anybody else sees anything. But the number of wild ideas that go through my head that I don’t reveal is astounding. I just don’t know how normal that is. So when you ask me if I’m different, honestly, I don’t know.I know that I say different things, which would be a pretty good indication of a different thought process, but not entirely. It might be just the one difference is I’m willing to say stuff. Maybe that’s the difference. And I do observe that I probably have a greater creative muscle than 99 % of the world. But I also don’t know how much of that is natural.Definitely some of it’s natural and how much of that is because I create something Several hours a day every day seven days a week for 35 years Yeah, you know sooner or later. It’s just it becomes your habit Creating so I don’t know how to turn that off My creative gene is going all the time
Paul Leslie:
Hmm. I’m hoping you, I can get your, your take on this from a persuasion standpoint. Let’s say somebody, they have an opportunity that comes their way and they’re being offered to make a kind of introduction. And the other side is so much bigger. They have so, in other words, you’re thinking about yourself. You’re thinking like, wow, I don’t bring much to this equation.Like why would they do this to me? But yet the introduction, the opportunity presents itself. How do you think the person that has less cards on the table or less money on the table or however you want to put it, how do they persuade the big fish or the big company to make a deal?
Scott Adams:
Well, this sounds like something that’s not hypothetical.
Paul Leslie:
It, you’re, you’re right. You’re right.
Scott Adams:
I’ll give you the I’ll give you some really good advice on this It had to do when I first got offered my my first syndication contract so that’s the big break for a cartoonist so this was you know decades ago and So it was the biggest company in the business the same one that syndicated at the time Garfield and peanuts And that’s the group that was offering me somethingSo obviously I had zero negotiating power, would you agree? I’d never published anything. And they were the biggest company in the world. And they were interested in working with me to see if we could do a deal. So I got a lawyer, and then we just bitch slapped them for six months until they gave me everything I wanted. And why? Because I knew something I’m gonna tell you right now. Talent is rare.When they found me, they didn’t want to lose me. And I knew that they don’t make the offer to more than a handful of people per year. So if you’re in maybe one of three people that they picked all year to maybe handle, they’re invested, meaning that they looked at everything else and you were in the top three. So.The big company doesn’t waste their time and talk to the little fish unless they’re impressed, but they don’t want you to know how impressed they are because that hurts their negotiating. What companies, what I’ve never seen done is somebody walking away if you were polite and professional, but couldn’t kind of make a deal. They’re still gonna, you know, still gonna circle around and see if they can make it work. If you’re a jerk,Well then, you they’ll say, I gotta work with somebody else. But if you’re polite and professional and you hold your value, the odds of them really being flexible and really treating you like you should be treated are excellent. So it would be easy to under appreciate your value. The only thing you have to go on is why’d they come to you? They came to you because you have something they need.
Paul Leslie:
Hmm.
Scott Adams:
Or something they want. So it’s not really about who holds the cards. It’s what do they need to fill in their checklist and what do you need to fill in your checklist and does it match?
Paul Leslie:
Hmm. Well, I sincerely hope that that helps someone out there and it did help me. So thank you for that. There’s really one question that I have left that I really, really, I want to know the answer to this question. People have told me incredible things as a result of knowing, you know,Being a part of the Scott Adams sphere, if you want to call that that. After we did the first interview, I’ve had people, they’ve said all kinds of things about you. Like, one person wrote to me after our first interview and I thought, “Wow, I should share this with Scott.” He said, or she said, I don’t know, “I don’t have a lot of friends, but listening to Scott every day makes me feel like I have one I can count on.” That was one of them.My friend Robert, who is the person who introduced me to this show, I asked him, said, what has Scott Adams given you? And he said, “Everything. He’s given me everything.” So this is really the question I want to know and I really do hope you’ll answer. Scott, do you have any idea? Do you know how much you mean to people?
Scott Adams:
Probably not, but I did have the incredible experience of when I thought I was gonna die a little sooner than I apparently am. And I announced it. I didn’t know that it would create this funeral kind of situation where people would wanna tell me how much I meant to them before I went. And there were hours of it. Owen Gregorian would do a.Spaces event on X and there was just be three hours of people saying how I’d help them in some way everything from losing weight to getting raises to Every damn thing you can think of and and including just being there as a friend because I do Tell people if you need a virtual friend You can find me every day. I’ll be your virtual friends And it does mean a lot to a lot of people soI don’t have a way to measure it to answer your question specifically. So no, I don’t know. But it’s a lot. And the books really are a big part of that because they, you know, they do the work when when I’m sleeping. And the books have meant a lot to people as well. So, no, I don’t have a way of knowing. But I’ve said this in public before that when I got my first divorce and I lost my entire family because it was a step kids.So you don’t get custody over step kids. So basically my life went from this full life to just empty, except for my job. And I just promised the universe that I would just donate myself to the universe. normally you do that for your family. But since I’ve been stripped away, at least for them, I donated myself to the universe. And that’s when I started writing books that were specifically toHelp people have a better life. And that worked out. So people wanted to hear what I had to say on that. And a lot of people built talent stacks and started doing systems over goals and some of the other things I was recommending and their lives just turned around. And then, you know, that of course incentivized me more to do more of it because it was so rewarding. And so I did. So it’s not a complete accident.
That people are saying I helped them because I’ve spent At least how many years 15 years? With that as my explicit intention to help as many people as I could through You know the the few gifts that I have that that translate that way So here we are.
Paul Leslie:
Well, I’ll just hold up the books because the two that I have. So I recommend them so much. I like especially recommending these to young folks. Reframe Your Brain. I wish this book had been around when I was, you know, 18. And then How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big. But there are others.
Scott Adams:
Yeah, if you’re looking for that second one there, do the one with the blue cover, because that’s the second edition. That one’s the first edition. Second edition’s the same, but I’m allowed to sell it.
Paul Leslie:
I gotcha. Look for the blue one. Well, this is always hard to answer, but anything you’d like to say in closing, anything else for the folks out there?
Scott Adams:
Yeah, that’s the blue one.
No, think we covered everything. I think we got it all.
Paul Leslie:
Great. Well, Scott Adams, what a pleasure.
Scott Adams:
It’s my pleasure. Thanks, Paul.
Paul Leslie:
Thank you.
