Fixable
Fixable Live: A conversation with Scott Galloway
May 6, 2024
[00:00:00] Anne Morriss:
Hey everyone. Welcome back to another week of Fixable. We have something really special for you today. A few weeks ago, Francis and I traveled to Vancouver to attend the TED Conference, and while we were there, we taped a live episode of the show.
[00:00:14] Frances Frei:
Our very first live episode.
[00:00:16] Anne Morriss:
Our first, but not the last.
[00:00:18] Frances Frei
Oh, it's far from our last. It was too much fun.
[00:00:20] Anne Morriss:
It was we, we had a really good time and we had a special guest with us who we will introduce in just a minute, but we got to talk about some really interesting aspects of life and leadership in the world right now.
[00:00:33] Frances Frei:
Yes. I think we've covered DEI, masculinity, Gen Z in the workplace.
[00:00:38] Anne Morriss:
The big three baby. Yes. In a shocking turn of events. We also covered the power of emotions, something our listeners know I care a lot about. So today we're sharing part of that conversation with you and hopefully we'll get to do another live show sooner rather than later. So stay tuned.
Well, Scott Galloway, welcome to Fixable.
[00:01:01] Scott Galloway:
Thanks for having me. Yeah.
[00:01:02] Anne Morriss:
And congratulations on your fabulous talk.
[00:01:05] Scott Galloway:
Go on.
[00:01:35] Frances Frei:
Yeah.
[00:01:06] Scott Galloway:
Go on.
[00:01:07] Frances Frei:
Yeah.
[00:01:10] Scott Galloway:
I'm so desperate and addicted to your affirmation. So, daddy, can I have some more?
[00:01:16] Anne Morriss:
Yeah. Uh, for our listeners and for anyone who missed it, you, you really just killed it up there.
Well, so how this is gonna work, this is actually our first live show, so thank you all for.
[00:01:25] Frances Frei:
Thank you for coming.
[00:01:26] Anne Morriss:
Being part of this experiment.
[00:01:27] Frances Frei:
Yeah.
[00:01:29] Anne Morriss:
Anything can happen up here. Um. And we're gonna talk for a while, then we're gonna do some direct live Q&A with the audience. So we wanna start by saying nice things about you, Scott, if you'll indulge us.
Uh, we are very big fans of yours, like most lesbians.
[00:01:46] Scott Galloway:
Thanks for saying that. Yeah.
[00:01:48] Anne Morriss:
The, the ladies who love ladies also love Scott Galloway. Oh, that's so nice.
[00:01:54] Scott Galloway:
Thank you for that.
[00:01:54] Anne Morriss:
And I, I wanna come back to that with a, a serious, uh.
[00:01:57] Scott Galloway:
Okay.
[00:01:58] Anne Morriss:
Point before this conversation is over. But let's start with who you are for the record.
[00:02:02] Scott Galloway:
Okay.
[00:02:02] Anne Morriss:
You're a professor at NYU Stern.
[00:02:04] Scott Galloway:
Yep.
[00:02:04] Anne Morriss:
You're a bestselling author. You have a new book dropping momentarily..
[00:02:09] Scott Galloway:
Yeah. Next week. Yeah.
[00:02:10] Anne Morriss:
The Algebra of Wealth.
[00:02:11] Scott Galloway:
Yeah.
[00:02:11] Anne Morriss:
A Simple Formula for Financial Security. You’re founder, advisor at countless organizations. You've been on the board of some of our most iconic companies, including New York Times.
You are a beloved podcaster, uh, best known for Prof G and for co-hosting Pivot with celebrity lesbian Kara Swisher.
[00:02:30] Frances Frei:
Mm-Hmm.
[00:02:31] Anne Morriss:
And you're, uh, husband, father of two growing boys. Is there anything you want to add to that list? Any plot points we missed before we dive into this?
[00:02:40] Scott Galloway:
No, I just want to say I'm really enjoying this podcast so far.
[00:02:45] Anne Morriss:
Um, Scott, as you play all of these various roles in the world, it seems like you are driven by a higher mission, a purpose, something bigger than yourself
[00:02:57] Scott Galloway:
Yeah.
[00:02:57] Anne Morriss:
Right now, is that how you think about your work and how would you articulate your mission?
[00:03:03] Scott Galloway:
It's not as noble as you're saying. My first obligation is to me and my family, uh, I've been very driven by economic success, and I'm not proud of that.
I didn't grow up with a lot of money, so from day one I had two goals. I wanted to be rich and awesome. Literally, that's what I wanted. And then I got one of those things, and you, I got blessed at an early, fairly early point in my life with like, okay, I, I have some reasonable semblance of economic security.
What do I wanna do? And I decided I wanted to teach. The thing that's been really super rewarding is kind of to falling into this topic of struggling young men. It's like, you know, you find something and it just resonates and you see the data and you think people aren't talking about it. And it, it was like.
Putting on something that felt so comfortable for me because I was one of those men.
[00:03:55] Frances Frei:
Right.
[00:03:55] Scott Galloway:
Right. Growing up, I didn't have a great deal of economic success. I didn't have a lot of romantic success, and I thought if I face the same incredibly well-resourced technology companies trying to convince me to have a reasonable facsimile of life behind a screen with algorithms.
That I didn't need a job. I could trade crypto on Coinbase or trade stocks on Robinhood that I didn't need to go out and take the risks of finding friends. I could find them on Reddit or Discord that I didn't need to endure the rejection and start working out and have a plan such that I could be attractive to women and endure the rejection that is inevitably part of mating.
I just could have been one of these guys.
[00:04:36] Frances Frei:
Right.
[00:04:37] Scott Galloway:
I relate to these young men.
[00:04:38] Frances Frei:
Yeah.
[00:04:38] Scott Galloway:
It's like thereby the grace of God goes I. So I can speak to it, I think with some relevance, and I just saw a tremendous opportunity. There's so many advocates for so many groups and because people who look like me have had so much advantage for so long, there's a lack of empathy despite the data for how, just how much young men are struggling, that they're paying for the sins of the advantage that I had and my dad had.
But if you look at the stats four times as likely to be addicted, three times as likely to kill themselves, 12 times as likely to be incarcerated in the U.S., they're gonna have two to one male, to uh, female to male college grads. It's also really bad in my view for women, 'cause women, if we're gonna have an honest conversation around mating, at least in the hetero world, women may socioeconomically horizontally and up men horizontally and down.
And the pool of men who are horizontal and up is shrinking. And some of that is a huge victory 'cause women are doing really well. And we should do nothing to get in the way of that. The thing I saw was that there was this unproductive conversation because of this void filled by what I call the manosphere, where it was this thinly veiled misogyny.
It starts offline.
[00:05:50] Frances Frei:
Mm-Hmm.
[00:05:50] Scott Galloway:
They, they highlight the problems and then they talk about being fit and taking control, and then it just comes off the rails and they start talking about women as if they're property and that they need to, you need to show off your masculinity by getting things.
[00:06:02] Anne Morriss:
Yeah. It's a, it's a slippery slide. Yeah.
[00:06:04] Scott Galloway:
And, and then oh, take my crypto university course. So I thought there was a, an opportunity for, okay, how do we start talking about an aspirational vision for masculinity? It says empathy is not a zero sum game. Gay marriage did not hurt heteronormative marriage. Civil rights did not hurt white people.
So being an advocate for young men who are facing real issues is in no way anti-women. This is when a man has failed, is when he starts blaming women, or he starts blaming immigrants. Then, you know we've lost him and that he has given up on a truly modern form of masculinity. So I just, I saw an opportunity.
It felt good, and it resonated with a marketplace. And it's just kind of calm organically.
[00:06:46] Anne Morriss:
Let's talk about DEI for a second.
[00:06:48] Scott Galloway:
Sure.
[00:06:48] Anne Morriss:
Just to get the crowd warmed up. Um,
[00:06:52] Scott Galloway:
We'll go to the easiest stuff first.
[00:06:53] Anne Morriss:
Yeah. Yeah. Uh, it seems like DEI at its at its best and we get pulled into a lot of these conversations.
It seems like this work at its best really is about making workplaces fair and inclusive for everyone on the payroll.
[00:07:06] Scott Galloway:
Yeah.
[00:07:07] Anne Morriss:
And. One of the things that I think we get stuck on, and Francis, I wanna get you in here, is that there should be just tremendous room for common ground here.
[00:07:17] Scott Galloway:
Mm-Hmm.
[00:07:18] Anne Morriss:
Not only because the goals are shared, but when you actually do get it right, everybody wins.
[00:07:24] Scott Galloway:
Yep.
[00:07:25] Anne Morriss:
How do we talk about it? Or do this work in a way that really does bring more people into it.
[00:07:33] Scott Galloway:
Professor?
[00:07:34] Frances Frei:
Um, we wrote an op-ed for the New York Times with our colleague Carrie Elkins, that said, you know, the mistake that the critics of DEI get is it works.
[00:07:44] Scott Galloway:
Mm-Hmm.
[00:07:44] Frances Frei:
Like all of the progress you were talking about.
[00:07:47] Scott Galloway:
Yep.
[00:07:47] Frances Frei:
It all happened because people understood the demographic tendencies associated with success. They didn't wanna have outcome-based success. I've never met a DEI program that wants her to be.
[00:07:44] Scott Galloway:
Mm-hmm.
[00:07:56] Frances Frei:
Outcome based.
[00:07:57] Scott Galloway:
Mm-Hmm.
[00:07:57] Frances Frei:
It's all equal access. We've been having unequal access. To me I think there is all of this common ground, but I don't think that that's what's behind the desire to tear it down.
I think the desire to tear it down has much more to do with misogyny and much more to do with racism. We always wanna step over race.
[00:08:18] Scott Galloway:
Mm-Hmm.
[00:08:18] Frances Frei:
Always wanna step over race and get to someone else, and. It's the stain on this country. We have never stopped and confronted what our issues are with race.
[00:08:31] Scott Galloway:
Mm-hmm.
[00:08:31] Frances Frei:
So I find there to be simmering misogyny and racism and I don't find it any more complicated than that. And I adore people who wanna go towards this. Socioeconomic, I grew up poor as well.
[00:08:43] Scott Galloway:
Mm-hmm.
[00:08:43] Frances Frei:
Um, but please stop stepping over race to get there. It's the wrong thing to do.
[00:08:51] Anne Morriss:
I mean, one of the things that I get stuck on is when we actually get into the trenches of doing this and roll up your sleeves and do the work of trying to make organizations better.
[00:09:00] Scott Galloway:
Mm-Hmm.
[00:09:01] Anne Morriss:
There is real progress you can make within the constraints of changing organizations. I mean, there's a famous statistic that 70% of change efforts fail.
[00:09:10] Frances Frei:
Fail.
[00:09:11] Anne Morriss:
So great. So DEI is tracking roughly to that 70%, but you don't throw out the goals. Of the work you, you learn from the 30% that is working and it feels like there's an um.
Just an absence of grace and an absence of charity and compassion around this conversation right now that feels like it's, it's,
[00:09:23] Frances Frei:
There's something else going on.
[00:09:36] Anne Morriss:
It's not that there's something else going on. And the, just back to where we started, the the, to me it's the opportunity cost that is so painful 'cause you speak to young men in crisis and when this work is done well, they are brought into the fold.
[00:09:52] Scott Galloway:
Mm-Hmm.
[00:09:52] Anne Morriss:
And given opportunity that they didn't have before. And so I think the frustration that we are both feeling right now is that, um, we're getting so distracted by the conversation about DEI that we're stopped putting energy into actually making progress on it.
[00:10:07] Scott Galloway:
I think there's so much nuance here.
I think it's such an interesting, I love the word you use grace. That we shouldn't be afraid to talk about this. And you say something not elegant, or I say something not elegant and that person is canceled or that we shame them and we get virtue points for shaming them. Because first off, I'm the beneficiary of affirmative action.
I got Pell Grants. I had unfair advantage.
[00:10:30] Frances Frei:
Me too.
[00:10:30] Scott Galloway:
Raised by a single immigrant mother who lived and died a secretary. Our household income was never over $40,000. And so I feel passionate about that and I think the model for universities is the University of California. University of California 26 years ago, and we don't talk about this, did away with race-based affirmative action, but they have an adversity score and they say, did this person have trouble living the life they wanted to lead in terms of their sexual orientation?
Did they grow up in a poor neighborhood? Was their father incarcerated? But they don't look at race, they just look at their adversity. And also, if you're born, and this is wonderful in America. I believe now you have more advantage or less disadvantage if you're born gay or if you're born non-white than if you're born poor.
And it didn't use to be that way. The academic gap, achievement gap in 1960 was double between black and white, then between rich and poor, and now it has flipped. Literally, if you go up the income ladder, the bottom 1% of household incomes have a 1% chance of sending their kids to college. And then it literally goes perfectly correlated until you get the wealthiest households have a hundred percent chance of getting their kids into college, and there's this wonderful progress that it's not as tightly correlated any longer about race or sexual orientation.
So my view is, all right, do we need to recalibrate what it means? The criteria for who we advantage or disadvantage? And where I think we can come together is that. About 70% of those criteria overlap because Black and Latino households still have on average $23,000 in wealth. White households have $150,000 in wealth.
But if you're from a non-white family where there's two parents and mom is a baller at the law firm and making a shit ton of money, that kid has a greater likelihood of attending college than some white kid from Appalachia. So I think we can come together and say, look, the key is to recognize some people have disadvantage through no fault of their own, but also recognize that things have changed.
So should we be thinking along the lines of the University of California?
[00:12:49] Frances Frei:
I, I, I don't know how much time you spend with professional DEI professionals or in DEI, uh, parts of organizations. They're amongst the most compassionate people, big tent people. They care about socioeconomic, they care about veterans.
They care about race, they care about
[00:13:06] Scott Galloway:
Yep
[00:13:06] Frances Frei:
Gender. So this straw man of DEI cares only about this and they will somehow advantage. And by the way, I've never seen these groups advantaged. I've just seen the disadvantages closed.
[00:13:18] Scott Galloway:
Mm-Hmm mm-Hmm.
[00:13:19] Frances Frei:
Or attempting to do it, but DEI is big tent. And what you're arguing for is big tent.
[00:13:25] Scott Galloway:
Mm-Hmm.
[00:13:26] Frances Frei:
That's the part that I genuinely don't understand, is we seem to agree. And yet we wanna tear down the very thing that in its absence, it's gonna be hard to take care of people that are disadvantaged. They say it's for big tent reasons, but literally they've not spent any time with any of the DEI professionals I've spent time with, which is at almost every large company in the world.
So I don't understand the vitriol behind it, which is why I think there's something cruel behind it. I don't think it's a, it doesn't feel logical to me.
[00:14:04] Scott Galloway:
Well, I think you have to discern between, so for example, where I think some people have made the mistake is they like the attention, they get accolades from people and then they decide that they're going to go after all DEI without understanding nuance.
I think DEI still has relevance in corporations. I don't think corporations have come as far as campuses. You know, when there's 78 Fortune 500 CEOs that are women. And what is it? There's more CEOs named John.
[00:14:29] Frances Frei:
Something like that.
[00:14:29] Scott Galloway:
And female.
[00:14:30] Frances Frei:
Yeah.
[00:14:30] Anne Morriss:
I, I think, I think women just caught up to John.
[00:14:33] Scott Galloway:
Just caught up to John.
So what that says is, all right, but if you look at people under the age of 30, women have made huge progress on almost every level. Sometimes they're actually superseding them 'cause they're getting more educational attainment. But something happens. And then what I think the data reflects is once you decide to leverage your ovaries, wham, the corporate world doesn't like you.
If you look at the corporate world, it's not discriminating against women, it's discriminating against mothers right now. And that is once a woman go has decides to have kids, she goes to 77 cents on the dollar. And when you have only 17% of Fortune 500 CEOs, you can't use the equality of opportunities, not equality of outcomes argument.
That's bullshit. That means there is neither a quality of opportunity or a quality of outcomes. So I think DEI still has a place in corporations. I would argue Professor that at most universities, we have done a pretty good job, and again, I go back to UC that I think it's gonna be a more productive conversation where we can all agree on getting to a similar place where there's more support universal around alumni and faculty, where it's based on income as opposed to based on visible characteristics.
I also think it does harm to people of color when their classmates sometimes, often question if and why they're there. I think that they pay the price for that. So I think it requires a lot of nuance.
[00:16:06] Anne Morriss:
Let's talk about, uh, those young people graduating, going into the workforce. There's a lot of chatter about Gen Z at work.
[00:16:14] Scott Galloway:
Yeah.
[00:16:14] Anne Morriss:
And we, we got a lot of great questions about what do I do with my Gen Z employees? Do you find that this is truly a different generation? I mean, to me it feels like they just have the courage to ask for things that
[00:16:17] Frances Frei:
Rest of.
[00:16:26] Anne Morriss:
We should have.
[00:16:26] Frances Frei:
Asked for.
[00:16:28] Anne Morriss:
Should have asked for.
[00:16:30] Scott Galloway:
Um, it's a double edged sword for the most part. They're a superior generation. Evolution works. They're more facile with technology. They understand the world better. They're more civic minded, they're more social minded. They're also, I find more emotionally fragile and that because of over parenting helicopter parenting, which I'm capable of because of social media, because we clear out the obstacles for them by the time they get to college, they have a bit of a princess in the peace syndrome, and that is the first time they get their heart broken.
The first time they get a C, the first time they face some sort of injustice. They have real issues. I think they're too emotionally fragile. Um, I love what the, the Dean or the chancellor of Michigan State put up the banner on freshman orientation. Uh, she put up a banner that said, “If words offend you, call your parents and tell 'em you're not ready for college.”
You know, I get, so, I used to get so many emails from department heads about microaggressions, and I thought isn't the point that we're supposed to turn them into warriors? That they're supposed to. Really, and by the way, the, the.
[00:17:37] Anne Morriss:
So how, let me just interrupt. So, so how does, how do organizations do that?
Because there are all these companies and teams absorbing this generation.
[00:17:47] Scott Galloway:
Mm-Hmm.
[00:17:55] Anne Morriss:
How do leaders build resilience? In a very practical, this is a show called Fixable. So in a very practical way, how do leaders of teams with Gen Z team members build resilience in. In this newest generation in the workforce?
[00:18:06] Scott Galloway:
Well, I think you, I think you're gonna forget more about this than I'm gonna know. Um, I am somewhat cynical about a corporation's role. What I have found is, generally speaking for-profit companies are so good in America at making money. They should be trusted to do nothing else. I don't think social media is gonna protect our children.
I don't think they give a flying fuck about your kids. Or, lemme put it this way, I think they're amoral. I don't think they're bad people. I think they're amoral. I think their job is to make money and they will make a series of incremental decisions on the path to hell such that they can become rich.
And America to be rich is to be loved. It's to be respected, admired, have a broader selection set of mates, give you your kids healthcare so you'll make incremental decisions that end up hurting other people that maybe aren't in your neighborhood. We need laws. We need laws that said, we're gonna sue your company if you discriminate.
We're gonna sue your company if you send a 14-year-old girl who's having suicidal ideation, an email saying, here's some images on suicide we thought you might like. And the, and the email includes images of nooses, pills, and razors that happened in the UK. So this notion that we're gonna call on CEOs better angels, and that they're gonna become social engineers.
You wanna be a good company, you wanna be a good in the community. But I think we need less virtue signaling from companies and less expectations from them. And we need more laws. I just don't trust companies to figure this shit out. I trust them to, to put out Instagram saying Black Lives Matter. Okay, what does that mean?
Or to stand up and say, I recognize we're on hallow grounds of Native America. Okay, you're gonna give it back. If not, shut the fuck up. So I think we need more laws, but I'm a bit cynical about companies. As this whole Bono red agents of change, I think their job is to provide people with economic security, and I think it's our job to have laws to ensure that if you are making less money because of your gender or your sexual orientation, that we hit that company really hard in court.
I mean really hard and create an algebra deterrence that says accidentally unwittingly, if you're paying this group less. We're gonna really hit you so hard, such that you put in place the practices to ensure it does not happen again. But I think we fetishize these corporations and their leaders so much that we expect their better angels to show up.
And every new ge- Sam Altman. The hush tones, I'm worried about AI. Yeah, we should think about that. I've seen what this can do. I'm really concerned. We've had 40 congressional hearings on child safety online. We've had zero loss. But we think Sam Altman's gonna be different. We can't trust these people. We can trust them to do what they're good at, which is make money.
So I find a lot of these initiatives, quite frankly, are virtue signaling and aren't that effective. And then we need laws.
[00:21:02] Anne Morriss:
Oh, all right. So Scott.
[00:21:03] Frances Frei:
We're gonna go to the audience for questions.
[00:21:05] Anne Morriss:
Yeah, we're gonna go front. So this is our, our last question, and then we're gonna bring in our fabulous TED audience.
This is my serious question about your lesbian fan club, and this is my theory of the case.
[00:21:15] Scott Galloway:
All right.
[00:21:15] Anne Morriss:
One of the gifts of being queer. And
[00:21:19] Frances Frei:
There are many.
[00:21:20] Anne Morriss:
There are many for the record, but you have more freedom to stand in front of the list of human attributes that the world has labeled masculine and feminine, and decide what's gonna work for you.
[00:21:35] Scott Galloway:
Yeah.
[00:21:37] Anne Morriss:
You are fiercely competitive. You have lots of protector energy. You're also very willing to cry in public, for example, you seem to have given yourself this same freedom, which in my experience is quite rare.
[00:21:56] Scott Galloway:
You're being generous.
[00:21:57] Anne Morriss:
Uh, as lesbians. We applaud. Game recognizes game, but what, what made that possible for you?
[00:22:04] Frances Frei:
Yeah.
[00:22:05] Scott Galloway:
I never thought that crying would be such an attribute. I didn't cry from the age of 29 to 44. I didn't cry when my mother died. I didn't cry when my, I got divorced. I didn't cry when my company went chapter 11. For 15 years. I didn't cry. I forgot how. And my biggest fear, I think about death a lot.
It's actually quite empowering. My biggest fear is I'm at the end and I struggle with anger and depression, which means I'm in the past too much. I have trouble forgiving myself. I did, made a couple mistakes on stage Today. I'm gonna beat myself up all fucking night tonight. I won't be able to forgive myself.
I'll feel good. I'll go online and I know, I can tell by the vibe that I'll get a bunch of nice compliments. I'm too addicted to other people's affirmation. It's really pathetic.
[00:22:48] Anne Morriss:
Oh, you're human, Scott.
[00:22:49] Scott Galloway:
Well, anyways. you're
[00:22:50] Anne Morriss:
You’re human.
[00:22:50] Scott Galloway:
Uh. For God's sakes. I'm 59. At some point I'll just need me. Um, but my fear is I'm so stuck in the past.
And I'm so in the future all the time 'cause I'm successful. And to be successful you have to be constantly thinking about the future that I'm never actually here. And you get to the end of your life and you think, okay, unbelievable prosperity. People that love me, that I loved immensely was never there.
Never there. And one of the ways I have discovered I can slow down and be in the moment is to really lean into my emotions. When I find something funny, I force myself to laugh out loud. I have a weird, unattractive laugh, but it informs what I find interesting. When I'm inspired by something, I stop and I think, why does this move me?
I'm much more emotive. If I see a guy who looks cool, I'll go up to him. I say, I just think you look so fucking cool, boss. And it puts me in the moment and it makes me, it's like, okay, I'm finally living my life. Because I can register those emotions. So my advice to people, especially men, is if you aren't leaning into your emotions, if you aren't inspired, if you're not laughing, if you're not just loving the shit outta sex and communicating how much you're enjoying it, if you're not crying, you're not really here.
I can guarantee you at the end of your life, you're not gonna go, geez, I wish I'd cried less. I wish I'd laugh less. I wish I'd told people how cool I thought they were less so for me, it's like cathartic. It's like fucking, finally I'm living my life.
[00:24:30] Anne Morriss:
And did you, did you make a decision what happened at 44?
[00:24:33] Scott Galloway:
To start crying again.
It wasn't any one thing. And I don't know if you feel this way, you.
[00:24:40] Frances Frei:
I’m gonna start crying. You just brought out the man in me. I'm gonna say.
[00:24:43] Scott Galloway:
There you go.
[00:24:46] Frances Frei:
I'm unleashed.
[00:24:58] Anne Morriss:
Well, we got a bunch of great submitted question, but I wanna reward people who showed up here. So, um, if you have a question, raise your hand. We have some. Lovely mic runners.
[00:25:07] Scott Galloway:
And please introduce yourself.
[00:25:09] Audience Member:
My name's Chadburn. I'm a longtime TED Stern, and I'm just so thrilled that you're here. Thank you for organizing this.
[00:25:14] Scott Galloway:
Yeah, thank you.
[00:25:14] Audience Member:
There's a statement in our culture, at least in America, that I grew up with, which is no pain, no gain.
[00:25:20] Scott Galloway:
Mm-Hmm.
[00:25:21] Audience Member:
How do you feel about suffering? Do you think you have to suffer to be successful?
[00:25:26] Scott Galloway:
Well, okay, so I do a survey of my kids. When I say my kids, I mean my students every year. How much money do you expect to make by the time you're 30? And they expect to be in the top 2% of income earners by the time they're 30. And then they use the word balance. And I'm like, okay, do you have rich parents? No, uh, give up on the balance part. I'm not suggesting you can't stay fit. I'm not suggesting you can't find a maid. I'm not suggesting you can't have a good time, but unless you're smart enough to be born rich, if you want to be wealthy in a competitive economy.
Uh, planned to do pretty much nothing but work for 20 years. That's what I found. I've had periods in my life where I've had balance, been in great shape, good relationships. That's usually when I'm losing money. And from the age of 25 to 45, I'm not proud of this. I did nothing but work. I mean, almost nothing.
I tried to work out. I still found time to drink and try and have the occasional mating opportunity, but for the most part, I just worked. Because I wanted economic security, and what I tell young people is they can have it all. They just can't have it all at once. And so have a sober conversation with yourself.
And by the way, I'm not saying that's the right way. It was my way. It cost me my hair, it cost me my first marriage. It cost me a lot of stress, and it was worth it because now I have a great deal of balance in my life. And so I just suggest all young people have a, an honest conversation around the trade-offs.
You can have it all. You just can't have it all at once. You know Jay-Z followed his passion and got rich. Assume you're not Jay-Z.
[00:27:09] Anne Morriss:
That's a great question.
[00:27:10] Audience Member:
I've got two kids that are 10 and 12, and it dawned on me, I'm 52. It dawned on me about a year ago I was sitting in a case study class with Harvard Business School folks, and they were teaching us about authentic leadership and ethics and diversity and all these great things about how to run great companies.
And I was like, man. I've been pretty successful in my life. I'm just learning some of this stuff now. What if I learned this when I was my kid's age? What if I learned this when I was 10, when I was 12? So I started sharing some of those concepts with my 10 and 12-year-old and found they could rock it.
And I'm just curious, you know, two things. One, what's something you wish you knew when you were 10 or 12? That would've helped you have been a better leader, and how would you have taught it to your kid or to yourself or to the kids that you were surrounded with?
[00:28:01] Scott Galloway:
If there's one skill someone asked me, I always kind of go to business.
If there's one skill I could give my kids, it would be not computer programming or STEM or biology or Mandarin or anything. I try and teach them, and I'm trying to do this to my kids to be storytellers. I think that is the, the skill that stands up. To the test of time, you wanna be an entrepreneur, you gotta be a great storyteller.
You want to score above your weight class romantically? You gotta have a good rap and your ability to communicate your ideas in a compelling way to either raise money, to handle difficult situations with people, to attract someone of high character, to be friends. It comes down to storytelling. So that is the one skill I'd want to give to kids, but.
You know, I mean, I have teenagers all the time calling me and asking me for advice. My 16-year-old has never asked me for advice on almost anything, and it's kind of heartbreaking. It's like, do you know how important I am among young men? And so, I don't know. I would just, I would just want to tell myself, you know, figure out storytelling and everything's gonna be fine.
You guys have any thoughts? You have sons.
[00:29:15] Anne Morriss:
The conversation we've been having recently around the dinner table is. About comfort with discomfort being the ultimate superpower and that all of their hopes and dreams are in the zone of discomfort. And so if they can get even a little bit more comfortable with even just the physicality of being uncomfortable.
[00:29:36] Scott Galloway:
That's great.
[00:25:36] Anne Morriss:
Then. Then it life opens up.
[00:29:39] Scott Galloway:
I love that.
[00:29:39] Anne Morriss:
In dramatic ways.
[00:29:41] Scott Galloway:
Yeah. I love that. So just along the lines, the thing I love about, I don't know if you're encouraging your boys to do sports or kind of competitive academic, whatever it is. The thing I took away from crew was at some point it, it was such a gift to me and I was easily the worst athlete at UCLA, um, is that at one point the air coming down, your esophagus is literally on fire.
You can't feel your legs. You are about to pass out. I'm not exaggerating. You're about to pass out. That's at 800 meters and you go to 2000. And what it gave me was that when I'm really like so depressed, I see no way out. I'm at my limit. I cannot work any harder. I cannot take this emotional disappointment anymore.
I'm so upset at myself. I just can't handle anymore what crew and sports gave me as a young man, as I realize, when you're at that point, you're actually about at a third of your limit.
[00:30:34] Anne Morriss:
Yes. Our older boy, uh, decided to wrestle this year.
[00:30:39] Scott Galloway:
It's a great sport.
[00:30:40] Anne Morriss:
It it's a great sport.
[00:30:41] Frances Frei:
Rough as a mom to watch your boy.
[00:30:41] Scott Galloway:
It's a great sport.
[00:30:41] Anne Morriss:
It's, it's rough and he, maybe we can cut this from the edit. He's terrible at it. And so he just goes.
[00:30:52] Scott Galloway:
That's more important.
[00:30:52] Anne Morriss:
Yeah, it's more important. That's.
[00:30:54] Frances Frei:
That was the breakthrough I had.
[00:30:55] Anne Morriss:
It was very hard to watch, and because he would just go and get the shit beat out of him every single time, he's never been happier.
He's never had more confidence. It's amazing.
[00:31:06] Frances Frei:
And I think now he does. Now he does pull ups every night until exhaustion. Yeah. It's been the most amazing thing.
[00:31:12] Scott Galloway:
Love that. People will often say, what's the key to your success? I'm like, rejection. I ran for sophomore class president, junior class president, senior class president.
Lost all three times based on my track record. I ran for student body president, where I went on to wait for it, lose applied to nine schools, got into one way less. I mean, rejection.
[00:31:32] Frances Frei:
It's.
[00:31:32] Scott Galloway:
Oh my God.
[00:31:33] Frances Frei:
Beautiful thing.
[00:31:12] Scott Galloway:
I can't tell you how many women have rejected me, and that's the key. Never losing your sense of enthusiasm and so your son, the fact that he's losing wrestling matches and is still enthusiastic about it, that is a gift.
[00:31:48] Anne Morriss:
That's.
[00:31:48] Scott Galloway:
God is a gift.
[00:31:49] Anne Morriss:
That's what we, that's what I tell 'em every morning at breakfast. Send them back out there. Yeah.
[00:31:54] Scott Galloway:
Yeah.
[00:31:54] Anne Morriss:
Um.
[00:31:55] Scott Galloway:
Bring home an owl. Bring home another owl.
[00:31:58] Anne Morriss:
Go get it. Big guy. Go get it. Yeah.
[00:32:00] Scott Galloway:
That's great.
[00:32:02] Anne Morriss:
Alright, well I think we have to wrap there. It's a great way to end.
[00:32:05] Scott Galloway:
Thank you.
[00:32:06] Anne Morriss:
Scott, you're, you're a total star and it was our privilege to host you on the stage and on the show.
[00:32:12] Scott Galloway:
Thanks for saying that.
Thank you.
[00:32:13] Anne Morriss:
Alright. Thank you everybody.
[00:32:14] Scott Galloway:
Thanks everybody.
[00:33:25] Anne Morriss:
Thanks for listening. If you wanna figure out your workplace problem together, please send us a message. We would love to have you on the show. Email [email protected] or call 2-3-4 fixable. That's 234-349-2253. And if you're under the age of 35, you can also text us, honestly any way you wanna communicate with us.
We are delighted to hear from you. We are so grateful for everyone who's written, called, texted. We couldn't make the show without you. Quite literally. Fixable is brought to you by the Ted Audio Collective and Pushkin Industries. It's hosted by me, Anne Morris.
[00:33:04] Frances Frei:
And me, Francis Frei.
[00:33:06] Anne Morriss:
Our team includes Izzy Carter, Constanza Gallardo, Banban Cheng, Michelle Quint, Corey Hajim, Alejandra Salazar, and Roxanne Hai Lash. This episode was mixed by Louis at Story Yard.
[00:33:19] Frances Frei:
If you're enjoying the show, make sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and tell a friend to check us out.