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Jan. 15, 2026 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
30:41
Episode 3073 CWSA - The Scott Adams School 01/15/26

Let's talk about lessons some lessons from Scott Adams~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Scott Adams Reframes, ZiaErica, Owen Gregorian, Sergio In Tucson, Andy Wang, Jay Plemons, Scott Adams

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Time Text
We need Paul Collider.
Yes.
The one and only.
Hi, guys.
We're just loading up here.
It still shows us pre-stream on my end.
Okay, let's check locals.
Good morning.
Okay, I'm clicking live.
All right, locals, can you hear us?
Howdy.
I think we're good, oh.
All right.
Good morning, everyone.
Welcome to the Scott Adams School.
I appreciate you all coming.
This is Owen Gregorian.
You can find me on X at Owen Gregorian.
I'm sure you all know who I am.
But we're just going to have a show today with a few different speakers.
We're not going to talk about the news today.
If you want to talk about the news, I'll be having my normal after party on Saturday and we can do that then.
But I think we'll just have some topics more directly related to Scott today.
So we'll see how it goes.
And I think Shelly is going to have an announcement tomorrow.
So you may just want to tune in tomorrow for that.
We don't have any details about that today, but she'll be back tomorrow with an announcement.
So tune in for that.
And I will turn it over to Erica and she can introduce our other speakers for today and we'll go from there.
Thanks, Owen.
Hi, you guys.
I'm Erica.
I am, I asked two guests to come on today with Sergio and Owen and myself.
And I think for the simultaneous sip, the locals are going to love this, especially.
It's a regular listener of Coffee with Scott Adams.
It's Andy.
Andy, why don't you do it for us?
Hey, good morning, all.
I'm Andy Wang.
I'm a regular, so you know who most of you know who I am.
So hope you're all ready.
All you need is a cup or a mug.
Alice's sign, a canteen mug, jugger flask, a vessel of any kind.
Oh, yours with your liquid.
I like coffee.
And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better.
This simultaneous sip.
Go.
To Scott, my friend.
Absolutely to Scott.
It's not as easy as it looks, right, Andy?
No, I. Not as easy.
So if we're not speaking, if we just mute our mics, and I am going to first introduce Jay Plemons, who you'll see on your screen.
So a lot of you on X have seen Jay's amazing clips, of course, of our beloved Scott Adams.
And what I love, Jay, about your clips is that you just know how to cherry pick the right thing.
I love how you insert some editing into there.
But what I love the most is the trolling vibe that you can give sometimes with those clips.
It's just, I love it.
So you guys, the Scott Adams School is in the works in effect.
And I invited Jay to come on to tell us what he's doing for all of us.
So take it away, Jay.
Introduce yourself and tell us what's going on.
Yeah, thank you, Erica.
My name is Jay Plemons.
I'm just been on X posting clips from Scott for the last year and a half or so.
I've tried every day just to find the best, you know, the West one or two clips that I really enjoyed because I figured if I'd enjoyed it, then someone else would.
So just try to share that out.
And then a few weeks ago, if you remember, in one of the pre-shows, Scott announced that what he wanted to do was take his micro lessons.
And even though some of them are still short, still condense them down.
As we all know, Scott could sometimes ramble on, uh, and/or alarm clocks would go off, or different things would happen.
So, what I'm doing, there's about 260 micro lessons.
I'm going through, clean up the audio, condense it for time, condense it for content, and just get down to the pure message of what was there.
So, the added benefit of this that I really enjoy is I get to re-watch them on, really learn them as I'm editing them.
So, those will come out shortly.
But as I said, so we are in the works of getting this content out there.
And I'm Jay Plymouth's on X.
I do appreciate all the messages people have sent me, thanking me for putting the post out there.
That was my goal, just kind of share and flood the timeline with Scott's wisdom.
So, thank you very much.
Oh, my God.
You did such a great job and will continue to do.
And I have a cat with dementia, you guys, so she's meowing a lot.
I'm sorry.
But also, are the micro lessons?
I don't know if you know this yet or you can speak to it, but are they going to just stay on locals for the subscribers?
That was the original idea.
So, I'm not really sure exactly everything that's planned out yet.
It's going to be a locals because the micro lessons are on locals now.
And so, we're looking to and how we can incorporate that into the Scott Adams school as well.
Go ahead.
Okay, I love that.
Thank you.
And Jay, please chime in with us during the reframe.
Like at any point, just jump in if you want to participate.
We want you to.
Okay.
Thank you so much.
Yay.
So, Sergio and Andy, did all right.
So, you guys, in your chat, drop any emoji if you guys brought your book with you.
Okay, because we'll see.
And everyone's going to get extra credit if you brought your book.
And it could be on Audible, even if it's on Audible, drop an emoji.
We want to see.
So, today, Andy has picked a reframe from Scott's book, Reframe Your Brain.
And shout out to the locals.
Do you guys remember when Scott was writing this?
And then he took a little trip to Hawaii to focus and write, but all we could hear were those crazy birds on the beach.
I don't remember the name of them, but oh my God, that was the creepiest thing ever.
We were so distracted.
But, Scott, he was like these whining babies.
Not just babies, but babies screaming.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We're like, oh, I'm sure that's really good for your concentration.
But it was amazing because don't you guys agree how Scott would take us on trips with him?
Like he never, really, he never missed a day.
So we went all over with Scott and we were there for a lot of his book writing processes.
And he allowed us to, you know, kind of workshop it with him.
So we all like, especially this book, we all really feel like we're part of this.
So, Andy, why don't you tell us what page if you have it and which reframe, and then we'll all turn to it.
And then why don't you and Sergio and Jay and Owen chat about it?
Okay.
It's if you have the paperback, it's page 19.
If it's the hardback, it's some other page, but I'm cheap and I only got the paperback.
So the reframe is your job is to get a better job.
Now, I'm just going to read a portion of it.
And then, you know, the usual frame, your job is what your boss tells you it is.
The reframe, your job is to get a better job.
And Scott wrote, don't confuse your job with the work your employer wants you to do.
The boss might want you to process all the pending orders by quitting time, but your job is to get a better job.
Everything else you do should service that reframe.
If it doesn't help you leave the job you are in and upgrade, it might not be worth doing.
But don't worry that this line of thinking feels sociopathic.
Doing a good job on your assigned duties is a way to look good for promotions.
The reframe reminds us that to be in a continuous job search mode, including on the first day of work at the new job.
If that sounds unethical, consider that your boss would drop you in a second if business required it.
In a free market, you can do almost anything that is normal and legal, changing jobs for whatever reason you want is normal.
Your employer's job is to take care of their shareholders.
It's your job to take care of you.
That doesn't always mean act selfishly, but if being generous with your time and energy seems that it will have the better long-term payoff, do that.
Your employer might want to frame employees as, quote, a family, unquote, which is common.
But that's to divert you from the fact that they can fire you at will.
They don't want you to know that you have the same power to fire them.
Part of the job of leadership is convincing you that what is good for the leader is good for you.
Sometimes that is the case, but keep your priorities straight.
You are number one.
Now, I'm not going to mention any names, but let's just call him Mr. X. You know, true story, Mr. X worked at a company for about 10, 12 years, and his boss framed it as a family and kept everyone loyal.
And Mr. X rose up in the ranks, made more money.
But then the boss's real family made demands.
The boss's wife made an ultimatum.
You can retire with me and move to Florida, or you can keep the business and I'll divorce you, move to Florida myself.
And I think for the boss, you know, it was cheaper to stay married.
And the boss sold the business.
The boss stayed on for about six months as a consultant, smoothing over the feathers, keeping the family feel.
But once the boss got done with his six-month consultancy, their new owners realized that Mr. X, a senior guy being paid more money, was worth about two brand new employees.
And they realized they could keep Mr. X to do a good job on one project.
This is a smallish company, 15 to 20 employees with a good book of business.
So they realized we could keep Mr. X and he can do a good job on one project, or we can take his salary and hire two new employees to do a mediocre job on two projects.
And mathematically, they made their decision and got rid of Mr. X.
Now, after Mr. X got laid off, I told him, hey, I told him this reframe.
You know, your job is to always get a better job.
He didn't think of it that way.
And then he landed on his feet eventually.
And now he's doing that.
He's always on the lookout for new jobs and opportunities.
You know, now, Scott in his book also mentioned, you know, for smaller companies, you got to give them a little more leeway.
That is true-ish because Mr. X worked for a smaller company.
And there's no shareholders.
But then when circumstances change, you got to be aware.
So that's, you know, that's my contribution to this reframe.
And I mean, Sergio, have you ever, you know, in your work life and encounters, have you seen how they could drop you in a heartbeat despite you like a family?
That's a wonderful reframe to really put everything in perspective.
I love how you said, like, you know, comparing the families, who's the real family, right?
The company is telling you, hey, we're a family.
Would you leave your wife?
I mean, come on.
So it is, it is, that's the way they do it.
In my, what I do, I don't have one boss.
I have a client.
So I have about 100 clients.
So I diversified all my bosses thanks to Scott.
That way I didn't have to treat each one as my only boss.
But my goal is to always get a better client, you know, get a better client all the time.
So every time I get a client, I don't try to get rid of them.
I just try to help them become better clients.
So that's the way I've been doing it in my, since 2009, I've been freelance.
I haven't had a job, you know, with a boss.
So that's what I've been doing, just trying to get a better client.
But that was great.
And I think Owen has a lot of experience on this too.
I would like to bring him in.
Definitely.
I think I always had a bit of this attitude, but I probably had some of the opposite.
So I probably needed this reframe when I first started working because I definitely have always felt like I wanted to be loyal to my, at least to the projects I was working on.
Like I would feel like I never wanted to leave a project before it was finished.
And so, but I, but I did have the flexibility to think, okay, if there's a better job, I'm going to consider that.
And I, I, I liked my first job out of college.
I liked the company.
I liked the people I was working for.
I liked the work I was doing.
I was getting promoted.
And so everything was fine.
But at that time, this was in the early 90s.
So it was a while ago.
But salaries were going up a lot every year.
It's nothing like today.
At least in my industry, like it would be going up maybe even more than 10% a year.
Like just new college grads every year would be making a lot more than the prior year.
And even internally, they would be giving out typically 10% raises to the people at my company.
So that's kind of what you came to expect is every year I'm going to be making 10% more than I was last year.
And maybe every few years I get promoted, but really it was still probably a 10% or so raise every year.
And that's just how they did it.
But the problem was the market was going faster than that.
Like it might have been going up 15 or 20% a year.
And they didn't do the they didn't do the internal raises as quickly.
And so I eventually realized, hey, I'm not making what I should be making here.
And I started calling back headhunters that were leaving voicemails for me.
And I got an offer from another company just like mine.
And they said they'd give me a 40% raise just to come over.
So I did that.
But even then, I was like, well, I want to finish off my project.
And I offered that to my old company.
And they initially said, oh, yeah, that's great.
Thank you so much for doing that because it'll take us a while to find somebody to fill your slot.
And then they panicked.
Every day the timeframe got shorter until they just told me to pack my stuff.
I think it was maybe three days later.
They just said, pack your stuff, you're done.
So I thought that was kind of unprofessional, but that's their end of it.
They were looking out for their interests and I was looking out for mine.
And so I kind of learned my lesson of this reframe through that process that I have to look out for my own interests and not the company.
And that next company I was at for probably eight years, it was a long time.
But in the end, what happened was they did a merger and all the leadership that was over my group, all my bosses went away.
I got new bosses.
And I was a very top performer at the company.
They had a very structured review process and evaluation process.
And I was always ranked in the top 10% every year for five years in a row.
And then all of a sudden they had to do layoffs and they had gone through all the low performers.
So they did something like five rounds of layoffs.
Like it was a lot.
They kept kept cutting people and cutting people and cutting people.
And so all the low performers were gone.
But they reached the point where they still had to cut more people and they laid me off.
And I really couldn't understand why.
I'm like, well, how can this happen when I'm ranked in the top 10% every single year, including this year?
I don't get it.
And I think what it came down to was just that loyalty of the leadership.
You know, we had had this merger.
So a bunch of people came over with that.
And we had had people say, you know, like, I didn't know those people.
They didn't know me, even though they could probably see my evaluations.
They didn't know who I was or have any of the history.
And I didn't have time to develop that with them.
So they just chose me to get rid of me because they didn't know me and they were going to keep the people they knew and liked.
And that's just how it worked out.
And so that was another very stark lesson in this reframe of they don't care about me.
And it was also that, you know, I think this might be a different reframe, but you may end up better off after that.
I ended up getting a job offer pretty easily by just calling up one of my buddies that had moved over to yet another company like this and said, hey, do you want to hire me?
And he said, yeah, sure, I'd love to.
And I just, I had a new job lined up very quickly.
So I bounced right back and it was no problem.
But I've been through this a number of times in my career.
You know, I've had a lot of success.
And I think I could certainly say that my career has been a success, but I've had a lot of setbacks like that where I've had to switch companies sometimes involuntarily.
And I've certainly come away with it with this reframe of saying, my job is to get a better job very solidly in my mind that whatever I'm doing, I'm trying to develop my talent stack.
And if you've ever switched jobs, you know, you got to update your resume.
And then the advice is usually you want to show results, like, you know, what did you actually accomplish in terms of results?
Did you make something 20% better or 50% faster or what financial contribution did you make?
And if you can put numbers on your resume and show those exact results, you're much better off when another employer is looking at you because that's the type of stuff that they love to see.
But if you're just getting a general description to tasks, it's nowhere near as good.
So those are the types of things I would focus on in the context of this.
But I'll stop now.
I've been talking a while.
Sergio, go ahead.
Oh, it's a good reminder also that the world fair, Scott told us that it was invented for children and idiots, right?
World fair.
And then we tend to think that it's real.
And we're working very hard and thinking, oh, you know, fairness will pay off just automatically.
And what Scott taught us, especially in his book, How to Fail and Almost Everything Still Went Big, is that that is just imaginary.
You have to cut through it.
You have to find a way to work on your skills and make it a corporation you instead of working for another corporation.
So that was amazing, Owen, fantastically.
You have so much experience in the corporate job.
You were like a perfect inspiration for Scott's cartooning.
Excellent.
Thank you.
Yeah, I mean, if you can focus on getting a certification that's going to get you to the next level or will look good on a resume, you should do that, even if you have to pay for it yourself, unless it's super expensive.
But a lot of times, employers will pay for it because it looks good for them too to have you with that certification.
And if there's a choice you can make at any time to say, can I volunteer for this extra thing?
Or can I do something on the side?
Or can I work on something in a different way so that it'll develop a new talent for my talent stack?
Those are the things you should try to do.
You know, it's very easy sometimes to get stuck doing the same thing over and over again and where you're not really growing, you're not really developing.
And that's always the time in my career where I felt burned out was that I just am like, well, I've done this type of project six times in a row.
I really don't want to do it a seventh time.
And I would find ways to do different work and get different skills.
And that always made me feel much better about my career.
And it made me more energized.
It made me feel like I was growing.
And that was a really good feeling.
So even apart from whether or not you want to move to a different company, you know, just growing is something that makes you feel a lot more fulfilled.
And I know Scott has talked about things are either growing or shrinking.
And, you know, I think anytime you can make sure that you're still growing and you're still developing new skills, new knowledge, getting better at what you're doing or making your company better or making a difference, I think that's what ends up bringing a lot more meaning to your work.
Jay, what do you think?
I totally agree.
In my experience, just thinking the other side of it of your jobs to get a better job, it's just in my experience with interviews.
Yes, they're asking you about what you've done in your current role, but they want to know what you're doing, what you would do in that role.
So if you're able to add on extra skills, add on extra talents that you don't need necessarily for the role you're in now, if you can do things that will help you in the next role, that's where you're really going to shine through.
Because you can talk about what you've done.
I've made this and did this, but they want to know what are you going to do for me, right?
Not what did you do for your old boss.
They're definitely, that's always been my kind of filter is my job is to gain more skills for the next thing, for the next better thing.
And Jay, you have a, you're an example of that, right?
You have been learning AI.
All these AI animations, you just learned it, right?
Yeah, I would just, I would learn.
I mean, you know, Scott was, you know, my using a lot of it, you know, like the God's debris and the AI of him and different things.
I learned, I did the, I don't know if you've seen it, but I did a Tesla Light show with the Akira the Dawn song.
So just things that like, I want to know how to do it.
And so let me just look up, you know, learn how to do this, YouTube videos, ask Rock, et cetera.
And then just that was incredible what you did with the Tesla with Akira's song.
Could you post that today?
Like again, so anyone listening right now, yeah, if they go to your account on X, I'll comment onto this on X as well.
Awesome.
You guys have to see it.
It's so incredible.
And I wanted to say too, that a really great example from another master student of Scott's, you guys, if you guys listening, whatever platform you're, you are on, if you could drop in the chat the trigonometry podcast.
Greg Gutfeld was just on there the other day.
He did a long form podcast with them.
And I think it's within the first half hour, but he so perfectly is saying to them, you know, your job when you have a job is to find another job.
And so, you know, he's like, you're not supposed to sit there and stay there.
You're supposed to find another job all the time, you know, while doing the best you could possibly do, but you should always be trying to find your next job.
And so he even talks about, you know, how he's been fired three times.
And I think he, I think, all right, I might be misquoting, but I think he talked to Scott about it.
He did.
And Scott said, well, are you better off or worse off now that you, you know, since you got fired?
And he was like, better.
And he's like, right.
So sometimes, you know, it's sometimes things happen to push you.
Like if you're not pushing yourself.
So my reframe is like, let's say you did get fired.
I mean, hopefully you didn't do anything wrong.
Like, you know, you want to be competent and be a great employee no matter what you're doing, but you've got to put yourself first and be reaching and looking.
And if you did get fired, then look at it like the universe's way of saying to you, like, look, like, if you're not going to leave, we're going to get you out.
Now, like, now take your talent stack and everything you've learned and go find the next thing.
So I just want to say I recommend watching Trigonometry with Greg Gutfeld.
It was great.
And Greg inserts so much of Scott's wisdom into everything he says.
And you'll hear it all the time when you listen to Greg talk.
So please, if you guys could drop that in the chat, even just the name of the podcast so people can see it, that's a good listen.
And Sergio and Andy, do you want to say any more about that?
Well, Jay, you are well trained by Scott because your job of getting a better job on the very next page is pick up skills at your old job.
So yeah, if you have the opportunity, be shy and learn something.
You're right, Jay.
And it was, and Scott wrote it on the very next page.
Thank you.
Yeah, no, that was fantastic.
An example of how putting all these skills together, you can manifest into a profession.
Because again, I'm glad that Greg Goffield mentioned the use Tyrus as an example, right?
Of not having to be the 1%.
All you have to be just the top 10% in a few things and you become unstoppable.
Thank you, Erica.
Thank you, Erica.
Oh, no, thanks, you guys.
So listen, Shelly will post today's video.
And if you guys want to continue the discussion, like even in the comments under the videos, do that.
And I think that, you know, we should, everybody listening, you know, take some time to scroll through the comments wherever you see them and maybe ask for help or opinions or advice and, you know, workshop it together even after this ends.
So, you know, the video will be here with the reframe.
You guys keep talking about it.
I think anyone who's had experiences like this, you know, maybe be a mentor to people asking questions in the comments and see if we can like all collectively be useful for each other.
Everybody's got a different talent.
And so I think we should come together as Scott's debris and really help push each other up with everything we can.
The other thing I wanted to say is we also would love feedback.
Do you guys like this format today of doing a reframe?
We want to, you know, we've been all grieving and struggling right now.
And it's very important to Scott that, you know, we keep his work alive, which we all want to do.
So if you like this kind of format, it helps us to have some constructive, polite feedback and to kind of know what you guys want to see.
Also, as Owen said before, he has his spaces show on Saturday and sometimes he does a subscriber show on Sunday.
So what I want to say is moving forward, we're going to do this live stream for now Monday through Friday.
Okay.
So Monday through Friday, we'll be here.
It might not be me, but someone will be here.
And then on the weekends, I would urge you guys to follow Owen Gregorian.
And you guys, again, people, you know, Owen's name.
Can you drop it in the comments so people can see his username?
And also, he has a subscribe feature.
You can listen to the spaces for free, but he also has a subscribe feature at the top of his profile.
It's very affordable, and I look at it like he takes so much time for us every day, cultivating news stories and helping and then doing these spaces that are so amazing.
That I look at it like you know, if we all contribute to his subscription, it's like we're like, hey, we're buying you a nice dinner, putting some gas in your tank to say thank you for your time because his time is way more valuable than a dinner.
Trust me.
So please subscribe to that.
And if you guys have questions, again, like drop them in the comments for everybody and tune in tomorrow for Shelly's.
She has some information and announcement for us in the morning.
And I want to toss it over to Sergio if you want to wrap up with anything before we go.
Oh, I just want to say that this was a great start.
I think you know, we didn't catch fire, nothing broke down.
The machines work for us today.
So Scott is like smiling on us.
You know, he's working on those technology guts.
I want to thank everybody for all the support.
Losing Scott is like losing a family member, but nobody knows.
All my neighbors don't understand.
Nobody knows what's going on, right?
So we're just grieving internally, and nobody's going to call you and say, oh, that cartoonist died.
I'm sorry for you.
They don't get it.
So thank you, Erica.
Thank you, Owen, and anybody that Shelly for keeping the glue, you know, being the glue.
Thank you for that.
And I'm going to be teaching me how to make memes.
We're going to have a micro lesson on that, how to make memes in one minute.
In one minute, just like me.
You don't have to talk like me, but you're going to be able to prompt memes like I do the same way.
So I asked Eric about that earlier, and I think we're going to work on something on that, right?
Oh, if you don't know, yeah, Sergio makes the best memes.
You guys are so good.
Make sure you're following Sergio.
I'll post everybody's user handle as soon as this ends.
I'll post everyone's user handle.
Okay.
And I say with that, Owen, thank you so much, as always.
And Shelly and Sergio and Jay, thank you so much for popping on today and participating.
And Andy Wang, my Jersey brother, so good to see you.
And thank you for picking an amazing reframe and for discussing it with us and letting us chat.
And you guys, let's have a closing sip.
As always, go out today and be useful.
And to Scott.
Scott.
Bye, guys.
See you in the morning.
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