AI’s $400 Billion Test Is About To Begin

24:29And I just want to point you to an analysis that was done by Truist where they looked at 30 of these like big blockbuster IPOs. They looked at everything from Facebook to Uber to Roblox, to DoorDash, they looked at the 12-month returns of those companies after the IPO. And what they found was that the average drawdown that was experienced by these companies within a year of going public, the average maximum drawdown was 55%. Negative 55%. So in other words, you could expect, based on history with a relative degree of certainty, that at some point within a year of going public, the stock is going to get cut in half.

25:09Now, that doesn't mean that the stock's not going to come roaring back later and go way up over the long term. But it does mean that when these companies go public, that is the peak hype. That is peak demand. That's when everyone wants to buy the stock. And usually what happens is once the demand fades and the hype kind of deflates, you see that the stock starts to fall. And over the 12-month average, usually they get cut in half. So I think the question for the investor is, do you want to buy right at the IPO when the stock is most in demand, when it's at its sexiest, when everyone's talking about it, when everyone's talking about it in the news and social media and on podcasts?

25:51Or do you want to wait for the hype to likely come down and then find your entry point when greed is low and fear is high. I think that's what you need to think about here. SpaceX is going to go public, Anthropik is going to go public, Open Air is going to go public. Maybe they'll have a pop, maybe they'll just have this explosive entry into the public markets. But realistically, given history, they're also going to enter a downturn and they're probably going to dip below the amount or the valuation that they went public at, that's when you want to think about buying. That's when you want to find your entry point.

26:27Because doing it now, when hype is at an all-time high, I mean, these valuations are just ridiculous. We'll see what actually happens with Anthropic and OpenAI. But if SpaceX is sort of a signal of what's to come, that's not the time that you should be buying. You should be waiting for these stocks to come back down. And realistically, they all will. So that would be my advice. Don't buy at the IPO. Give it some time. Wait for the hype to fade. Then you can find your entry point.

26:56Scott Galloway:What you're doing is what we say a little bit not to do, but I'll engage in it. And that is you're trying to time the market. And I understand that, you know, at these valuations, you may want to stay away from it. I agree with that. What typically the investment bank does, is one of the reasons to go public is it's a branding event and you only get to go public once and you want to manufacture scarcity and hype such that you get a pop. And I've even said, advise companies that are going public price well below the demand, because if you're up 40, 60, 80 circle when public at, you know, 200 % pop, the additional five or 7 % dilution, which isn't the case here because they're raising so much money, but the additional five or 7 % dilution from, or two or 3 % from leaving money on the table, because technically you're raising money.

27:47Scott Galloway:You could raise a lot more money at a lower dilution, but the branding you get when you're seen as, wow, this IPO, even if you can raise money to cheaper costs, to be able to have CNBC analysts fawning over the fact that your first trade was 30 % up, that's almost worth the dilution because it creates a certain momentum and halo. Wow, this must be a great company. No, the bankers manufactured the pop. Sometimes they misestimated and the pop is more, but the last thing you want is a broken IPO because that'll be the story. If SpaceX were to price at 1.8 and go out on the first trade at 1.5, that would be an extraordinary victory for everyone, including SpaceX.

28:29Scott Galloway:Obviously not the first trade, the people who bought into the IPO or got allocation, but every story would be SpaceX broken IPO. Not SpaceX raises money at 80 times, revenues, but SpaceX have broken IPO. So the banks are smart at estimating demand. They'll look at the number of times oversubscribed it is, and they'll say price lower, price lower, whatever it is, in such that we can manufacture a pop. So if you're fortunate enough, and 99.9 % of people aren't, to get into our allocation in the IPO, then fine. Have at it, take the bet on the trade and the first trade. Beyond that, I would say look out below.

29:07Scott Galloway:And if we're going to have fun here, I think the company that most likely has the biggest pop is Anthropic because loosely speaking, the story, the overall halo is that there's a lot of noise out there that SpaceX is overvalued. That's just sort of becoming the little bit of the narrative, right? And in this case, it's true. The narrative is actually true. Yeah. And then if you look at OpenAI and Anthropic, we've never seen a more vicious trading places or Freaky Friday of the market leader and the number two happen in 90 days. And OpenAI is on the wrong side of that and Anthropic is on the right side of that.

29:47Scott Galloway:So I think Anthropic probably, they have, quite frankly, Anthropic has more momentum and riz right now than either of those two companies. The story of SpaceX is it's overvalued. The story of OpenAI is it's no longer number one, it's number two. And the story of Anthropic is that it's just kind of firing on all 12 million cylinders, if you will. We'll be right back after the break. And if you're enjoying the show so far, send it to a friend and please follow us on YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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33:20We're back with ProfG Markets. It's been a rough year for fast food franchise operators, So far, we have seen bankruptcy filings from operators for Subway, Applebee's, Popeye's, and Carl's Jr. And some are blaming the franchise model itself. One McDonald's franchisee said that operators, quote, cannot absorb all these costs, do all this discounting, and still pay to remodel our landlord's building. This issue is especially relevant for McDonald's. Its franchised and affiliated locations account for more than 95 % of restaurants and roughly 62 % of total sales. Because of that exposure, the company has rolled out a new initiative called McDonald's Next, which is designed to make its restaurants, quote, easier to run and more enjoyable to visit.

34:07What stands out is how explicitly the strategy focuses on operators, not just customers. The message is clear. Improving the experience for franchisees is key to improving the business overall. So, Scott, fast food franchises are struggling right now. Plenty of bankruptcies, Burger King operators filing Chapter 11, Popeye's operators, Carl's Jr. There was a Domino's franchisee, which also just went bankrupt this year. And apparently, there are concerns about the franchise model. Apparently, it doesn't really work anymore. That is at least what these franchise operators are saying or complaining about to the larger corporations.

34:50I mean, when you look at all of these fast food closures, do you think it's that or do you think it might be something else?

34:58Scott Galloway:So the franchise model is like the licensing model. It's the ultimate business model. They come up with a good concept that people love. And then rather than scale the company and use your own capital, you find local entrepreneurs that want to open. I was on the board of Panera and the largest Panera, there was a franchise that had 40 stores in Southern Florida, and you have a talented on the ground, you have talented on the ground management. The key to retail is that the owner is there. So for example, the most successful franchise model, I would argue, arguably, so Panera, Starbucks, and Chipotle always had NPS scores of like 62 or 63.

35:35Scott Galloway:And NPS is basically considered kind of the holy grail of consumer metrics. And that is the number of people that would recommend it, strongly recommend it versus of people that wouldn't recommend it. So it's sort of passion, consumer passion. Chipotle, Panera, and Starbucks, always around the same thing. And then 10 points above that was Chick-fil-A. I mean, just striking. And Chick-fil-A's secret sauce, yeah, the chicken's fine. It's a great product, but the other ones have a great product too. It was that they had this really unique model where they have 25 ,000 people apply to be one of the 80 or 120 franchisees.

36:12Scott Galloway:And they call from former military veterans to, and they have this really sophisticated means of trying to find somebody who they think is just passionate about the brand and will be on site every minute of every day. There's all this data showing that a restaurant does not work if the owner isn't there a lot, whether it's shrinkage, making sure the bathrooms are clean, saying hi to consumers. And so Chick-fil-A, where I'm headed with this, this isn't about a business model. This isn't even about them competing with each other. Newspapers made the same mistake. You know, the New York Times thought it was competing against the LA Times or the Boston Globe or the Chicago Tribune.

36:52Scott Galloway:No, they were competing against a structural shift in consumer behavior. And I want to acknowledge I'm a hammer and everything I see is a nail. But I think this is all about I think this has nothing to do with the franchise model. I think this is about GLP-1. And that is one in eight, 30 million Americans are on GLP-1s. The population of Texas is on GLP-1s now. And you don't go into a Wendy's and eat a double Whopper or whatever the fuck they serve as and then leave and think, wow, that was a good idea. Wow. That made all kinds of sense, supersizing my McDonald's meal at Newark Airport. By the way, that's an amazing meal.

37:32Scott Galloway:Newark Airport, McDonald's, shout out. It's like supposedly one in three times a pack of cigarettes is sold. The person buying it is swearing to themselves it's going to be their last pack ever. You typically don't walk out of fast food thinking, great idea, great idea. You need cheap calories because it's gotten so expensive. We subsidize beef. We subsidize water. And people are so time-starved and working so fucking hard that if you're a single mother, I used to eat fast food all the time when I was growing up with my mom because, quite frankly, was the most affordable means of getting cheap calories.

38:05Scott Galloway:And it was convenient, it was fast, it was easy. Unfortunately, it is really bad for you because they're engineered to addict you with salty, sugary, and fatty food that we couldn't find on the Savannah several thousand years ago. And it's just really bad for you. And what do you know, GLP-1s come, there's something like 20 % of America eats at McDonald's once or twice a day. And I gotta think GLP-1s are starting to kick in here. I just don't – the economics of a franchise model are somewhat at play here. And that is the labor model worked or the franchise model worked when labor was cheap, interest rates were low, and consumers weren't counting calories.

38:50Scott Galloway:All of that is broken. But more than anything, people are having an easier time driving by a jack-in-the-box and driving by it and just saying, I'm going to go home and eat kale or I'm going to go home and have a bowl of, you know, whatever it is, a bowl of cereal or I'm just not that hungry. And I think this is – I think GLP – I mean, I've said this before. I think GLP ones are bigger than AI. So I think that this is – sure, I'm sure it's something about the franchise model, interest rates, all that, you know, labor, inflation. I'm sure all their concerns are real. But if everybody was eating more, that would roll over the anomalies in the franchise model.

39:32Scott Galloway:This is the oxygen is being sucked out of the room. And there's just – it's like when a company is shrinking, everybody starts blaming each other and they're questioning the business model. It's like, no, people just aren't buying newspapers any longer. They're getting news from different sources. So I'm open to pushback here, but I think this is more a story of GLP-1 as opposed to the franchise model doesn't work. I think that makes a lot of sense. And I think the comparison to the newspapers is a great one because it's easier to – if your business is declining and if your competitors go bankrupt and then you're struggling as well, it's an easier pill to swallow to say that there's something that you need to do organizationally or management-wise to sort of restructure your business.

40:15Or maybe we need to sort of start changing the way that we present our menu. Maybe we need to, you know, upscale our locations. Those are easier problems. But it's a different thing to say that our entire industry is structurally undergoing a shift, which is going to eat away at our bottom line. And that is exactly what happened with the newspapers. And it does seem like a similar thing is happening here. Like, a lot of people are saying, oh, it's inflation. Oh, it's the fact that prices are going up. People are downscaling. Historically speaking, fast food is recession-proof. I mean, you look at most major recessions.

40:48You look at 2008, fast food traffic was stable because it is one of the cheapest options. I mean, that's kind of what you do. You go get a really cheap option over at McDonald's if you're struggling economically. So I don't see that as a very viable argument, but it is true foot traffic to fast food restaurants is going down last quarter it fell more than one percent the quarter before that it fell around two percent and you have to think that's crucial statistic there that i'm sure a lot of these franchisees aren't really thinking about because it probably seems to out there which is as you said one in eight u.s adults are now using glp1 drugs that is 30 million people and that number is only going up over time and so So if you look at the, I mean, that's the GLP-1 penetration.

41:35Let's look at the fast food penetration. Four in five Americans are eating fast food at least once a month, and around two in five Americans are eating it weekly or more. So if you just count that up among the adult population, that's around 110 million people, 110 million adults who are eating fast food weekly. If you've got 30 million on GLP-1s, you can just do the napkin math. You're essentially reducing the total addressable market by about 27 to 30 percent. And that's assuming that the people who are taking GLP-1 drugs aren't going to McDonald's, they aren't going to Wendy's, they're not going to Popeye's, Burger King, Carl's Jr., you name it.

42:12And I think that is a completely fair assumption to make. If you're on GLP-1s, I doubt that you're feeling very good or even excusing the fact or the idea of going to McDonald's once a week or even more than that. I just don't think that that is really happening. So I think that this is definitely true. I think that this is something that these companies need to start taking really seriously. And I think when these companies report their earnings, it seems that so far they've kind of brushed these concerns aside and said, no, we're not really worried about that. At a certain point, I think they need to take it a lot more seriously and recognize that this is something that Wall Street and investors are genuinely concerned about because it has way larger implications than you're not running your business right.

42:57This is a structural, secular issue that they need to start taking seriously. So I'm with you. I'm in agreement.

43:04Scott Galloway:You know who's probably adopted the franchise model at a greater scale than fast food restaurants is hotels. Very few hotels are owned by the flag. Four Seasons owns one of its property, its flagship property, its headquarters in Toronto. Every other Four Seasons is owned by a rich guy who thinks I'd like to I'd like to own the local Four Seasons. And then they come in. It's a much better model. They plant the flag. They let them tap into the reservation systems. They have a very onerous owner agreement around you have to have someone 24 hours a day at the check-in desk. You have to clean the rooms twice, you know, whatever it is.

43:34Scott Galloway:And they take 8 % to 12 % of top-line proceeds. And the owner of the Four Seasons in New York, I think, had to give it back to the bank because they had to maintain these onerous standards when no one was checking in. But it's an amazing model. And by the way, in the hotel business, it's still working because people love the idea of owning the Six Senses. But almost all of these companies, almost all of the big brands now in hotels, Starwood, Hyatt, a lot of them are basically a franchise model. And it's working. So again, but GLP-1, as far as I can tell, it's one of the few industries I haven't been able to reverse engineer a disruption from GLP-1.

44:12Scott Galloway:This isn't the model here. This is, beef and these shitty foods need to be priced to their real costs. We bury the Central Valley and cattle ranchers in water and we subsidize the shit out of beef and bad beef that's not good for you. So I don't feel for, and also the fast food industry, you could argue employees people, but a decent number of employees, But I don't think this is an industry we're going to miss a lot. I don't. I don't. My feeling is this is a healthy part. It's like I don't think we need more CVS's or bank branches in Manhattan. I'm ready for a lot of those to go out of business.

44:52Scott Galloway:And I don't think we need nearly as much fast food. Now, some people would argue you're being an elitist. There's food deserts. It's cheap calories. And eating healthy is really expensive. But I can't imagine it. And we've talked about this before. I just think GLP-1s are going to be so massively accretive. And I had the head of Lilly. I had the CEO of Lilly, which is probably the most important company in the Midwest right now, a trillion-dollar company located and headquartered in. Guess, do you know where it's headquartered, Ed? No, I don't. Where is it? Indianapolis. I love that. The latest trillion-dollar company is in San Francisco, New York, or wherever, London.

45:30Scott Galloway:It's in Indianapolis. Yeah, it's great. And GLP-1 drugs have gone from$1 ,000 a month to somewhere between$250 and$500. I think they're going to be sub$100. And if you can do a GLP-1 at sub$100 a month, I would argue you're probably going to save money because these costs, these indulgences, shitty food, alcohol, whatever it is, it adds up pretty fast in terms of an expense. so i'm i know i hate to say it i'm sort of i'm sort of excited to see jack-in-the-box just fewer of them now i would like to see a lot more in-and-out burgers i will say that but i do want to you know if if there's fewer mcdonald's i'm not sure that's a bad thing for the economy yeah i think i agree with that by the way just before we end on this point you know you used a few i think it was a few years ago we were talking about glp1s i mean we've been excited about this for a long time.

46:18And we're trying to think about all of the sort of the after effects and sort of who would be the downstream winners and losers. We're talking about maybe fitness companies. And I think, I believe we said lingerie companies. Here's just some interesting news. Victoria's Secret stock rose 40 % last week. Why? Because of an incredible earnings report where they posted massive revenues up 15 % to$1.56 billion. They raised their full-year revenue guidance to more than$7 billion. They saw sales increases across every single income group. And a lot of people are asking, okay, why is it? Why is suddenly everyone super excited about buying lingerie and buying underwear?

47:07I think you could make the case that a lot of it has to do with GLP-1s, that people feel sexier, they feel more fit, they're in shape, and now they want to go and they want to buy more sexy lingerie. So, I mean, we can't quite prove causation yet, but I think you can make a case that this is one of the winners. What do you think?

47:29Scott Galloway:A hundred percent. When you lose weight and you feel good about yourself, you know, what do you know? You want to go out and buy a new wardrobe. Uh, so I think, you know, look, uh, urban outfitters, uh, uh, company I was on the board of their stock has doubled in the last five years. You know, you, you feel sexier. I think it's going to have a, uh, a bit of a baby boomlet maybe because supposedly lowering obesity rates increases the fertility of somebody. And I think that's a fancy way of saying people are more down to fuck when they feel good about themselves. It's true, right? You feel good about yourself.

48:07Scott Galloway:You look better naked, which, I mean, all of this adds up to a bunch of wonderful things. New wardrobe. I think gyms are going to boom because you want to keep the weight off. You feel good about yourself. It does seem that the entire country is taking fitness a lot more seriously. And then we've just been given a literal drug that is speedballing that process and that transformation. I also think it's going to, in a weird way, I think the pharma companies who have doubled down on GLP-1 are going to boom. I wonder if we're going to see a decline in antidepressants because there's a link between obesity and depression.

48:39Scott Galloway:So I'm just so excited about this technology. But, yeah, I don't. We asked, Mia, one of the moments I loved at Prop G was Mia went downstream and looked at the supply chain of GLP-1 about three years ago and said there's a publicly traded company that manufactures the syringes. and we talked about it and the stock doubled in the next three or six months. But now I think it's, I think it's Novo Nordisk has just come out with pill form. And what I think you're going to see here is a giant decline in the cost of these drugs, which I think is amazing. But meanwhile, I think the profits and the total revenues are going to I think we're about to get the mother of all lessons in elasticity that as prices go down, total revenues will go up because it'll start penetrating into the community just that need it.

49:29We'll be right back. And for even more markets content, sign up for our newsletter at ProfGMarkets.com.

49:44Scott Galloway:Support for the show comes from Upwork. When you run a business, one of the biggest hacks is realizing you don't have to do everything all by yourself, which is especially good news if you're feeling underwater and might be looking to hire someone. Upwork makes it easy for you to bring in the right freelancer so you can stay focused on running your business. Upwork is a one-stop platform to find, hire, and pay expert freelancers. Find specialized talent across web and software development, data and analytics, marketing, business operations, and more. You can browse profiles, review past work, and can get help scoping the role so you can hire with confidence.

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52:28We're back with Prof G Markets. We are back in the studio after the first ever Prof G Markets tour. Over the past week and a half, we traveled to five cities, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Miami, Chicago, and New York. We met listeners. We talked about markets, and we got a firsthand look at how people around the country are thinking about the economy and investing. Now that the tour is behind us, Scott, it is time to debrief. Let's discuss our learnings from the tour. And let's also get into the numbers here. I'll just give you a little bit of data around how this tour actually went down. We sold 5 ,239 tickets in our five cities.

53:09Our biggest city was New York, where we sold out the town hall. Almost 1 ,400 people showed up for that show. Our second biggest show was San Francisco, where we sold more than 1 ,100 tickets. Scott, takeaways, success, financially, personally, emotionally?

53:28Scott Galloway:So just to be honest, I found it very stressful. You know, if someone gives up, it's one thing, if this pod sucks, they go back to walking their dog, right? They just turn it off. I think when you have 1 ,200 people show up for an event and they've spent 100 bucks or more, by the way, on StubHub, our tickets in New York, we're going for 500 bucks, you have to bring it. You know, you have to. That'd be good. Yeah. You want them to really enjoy themselves. So, and also I felt more responsibility because when I did this with Pivot, Kara is so experienced with live events and I just kind of show up, tell a dick joke, maybe occasionally stumble on some insight and the whole thing works.

54:09Scott Galloway:And she manages the whole thing. And in this one, you're outstanding, but I felt more pressure to kind of be the MC if you will, and keep it on track. And I was just, I was just, quite frankly, I was anxious. So I was super relieved, but we had, what are some observations? I think that live events are booming because people want to get out and touch grass. I think getting your, every brand needs a certain number of evangelists. Evangelists are key to a brand. And that is people who just, when they hear the brand name, they say to their people, oh, property markets, someone hopefully goes, I love that show.

54:48Scott Galloway:And I saw it and it was a ton of fun. That is just so important to a brand. So getting out there and trying to find your evangelist and also when it works and this tour did work, it's really rewarding. And also it was a nice moment for us. I think when Hillary, when Secretary Clinton came out on stage, it felt like sort of the show was validated. The fact that someone that interesting and important, and although it's not really markets related, would show up live for one of our events. It was just a nice moment of validation. I enjoy flying around with the team. I felt like Mick Jagger flying around with NSYNC while they were in high school.

55:21Scott Galloway:I'm like, Jesus Christ. Everyone is just so, I'm like, all right, everybody needs to be in bed by 11 p.m. It's like, literally, I'm with children. And what you're finding is you can, the ticket, what's interesting about live events, the ticket sales cover your costs maybe a little bit more, but where you make money is on the sponsorship. That's where the big money is. And that is our sponsorships range from like a hundred grand to 500 grand. We try and get for the tour, we try and get three of them because the power of branding and in-person show is really powerful. And, you know, those events are just, you know, they're just economically, I'm not sure they make sense.

56:01Scott Galloway:It's a lot of work. I was in seven cities and six days and five stops and through a speaking gig in there. And then anyways, but so I found it exhausting, very rewarding. The trend is towards in-person events. People are recognizing one of the biggest trends in the consumer economy right now. And that's the reason why FlexJet is doing well and LVMH is not. And LVMH just took a mistake in FlexJet and why Disney parks are up, but, you know, people buying shit is down. Is people realize as they get older and coming through COVID that we overestimate the pleasure and happiness we're going to get from things.

56:41Scott Galloway:And we underestimate the pleasure and happiness we're going to get from experiences. And unfortunately with Live Nation, which is a monopoly, it means that Taylor Swift tickets go for$2 ,800. People were upset about that with our with our tour too. I mean, what I can say is there's not really much we can do about it. This is the ecosystem. Like we kind of have to play ball here with them. Well, and we're charging I think it was$100 or$200. I went to Coachella. My God. VIP tickets such that you don't have to be in a teepee and have a 19-year-old running over you trying to see Justin Bieber. It's$2 ,500.

57:16Which is, by the way, that's about what it costs for a nosebleed at the Knicks game right now. I think if you want to go see the Knicks, it's just like$2 ,500,$3 ,000.

57:25Scott Galloway:Well, I don't know if you heard, but I'm going to get really crazy. The tickets, tier one tickets to the finals of a World Cup are$38 ,000. Someone sponsor us. Someone take us, please. Yeah, yeah. By the way, I think FIFA is the most corrupt organization with the best product in the world. I'll just give some observations as well on this tour. I mean, I think it's a really interesting point and it's an important point from a business perspective that this doesn't make that much sense for us financially. Like this event is profitable, but we can do other things that are a lot more profitable, specifically continuing to do this podcast and charging way higher than average CPMs because we have a good brand and because we have a good aspirational audience.

58:08I mean, that's really how we make money. It's not from going and doing live tours. That's kind of how like comedians go make their money because they don't make as much money charging for the CPMs on their podcast. They make more money getting people to pay large prices for live events. But I think there are some really important things that are rewarding for us down the line, which is what makes it worth it for us. One, it's fun. That was, I mean, just a whirlwind rollercoaster of a time, traveling around the world, around the world, around the nation with the team. You know, we went and we partied at the Faena, and then some of the rest of the team, we went out to club space and we stayed out partying.

58:53And it was our research assistant Dan's birthday, and we got him a bottle. 23rd birthday. 23rd birthday, and we celebrated, which is fun. And it's also great for team morale, which is actually important when you're running a very high-intensity organization where you're making podcasts and videos literally every single day. So that was really important. And then also, it's really important for us to understand who the audience is, to connect with the audience, and to deliver some sort of a payoff for our superfans. Like, I was so... One thing that we did at the end of every show as we like stuck around and we talked with everyone because that was meaningful to us.

59:32And I want to make sure that if you're listening to the show, that you're getting some real reward from this and that you're feeling that you are part of a community, which is exactly what we delivered for these shows. So that's really important from the audience perspective. And then finally, in terms of making money for the long term, when you're in the business of advertising, there are two things that you want to do. One is you want to get as many downloads and clicks as possible. We all know that. But two, you want to demonstrate to advertisers that the relationship with the audience, that there is a depth to that relationship and there is a strength in that relationship, that the audience has a level of loyalty to you.

1:00:10And so if you can go out there and show the world, hey, we have a show and 1 ,300 people in New York took time out of their day. They showed up on a Tuesday night and they paid hundreds of dollars for a ticket to show up and watch this show, that says something very meaningful to the audience or to the advertisers. That tells the advertisers that the audience is listening and the audience cares. So I'm just sort of laying out why this all makes sense from a financial business perspective for Prof G Markets, despite the fact that these things aren't that profitable compared to other things that we could be doing.

1:00:47Over the long term, it really pays off. And that's sort of the business case for why we're doing it. The final point I will make on why it makes sense to do this is the content that we get for social media. I mean, we've got a lot of clips from the tour. What I've said to the team is we want to make sure that we inspire a massive sense of FOMO among anyone who isn't showing up to these live events. I want you to be seeing how much fun we're having. I want to be posting it all over Instagram, all over X, all over LinkedIn, all over threads. I want everyone who isn't at this show to think, God damn it, I need to show up to the next live tour.

1:01:22So I hope that we did that. I had an incredibly good time. It was genuinely so fun meeting everyone who listens to this show. And I couldn't believe it at times, but it was so rewarding. And I hope for those who showed up, I hope you had a good time too.

1:01:37Scott Galloway:Yeah. Other than the relevance, validation, narcissism and money, for me, it's all about the fans. yeah this is this is what we're all about we are transparent seriously one of the things i found interesting was that i've done a bunch of live events and a bunch of speaking gigs for years and i would i would there's been a transition in q the q a is always the most fascinating thing anytime i speak somewhere i demand q a i think that's the most interesting part and we had q a for a good 20, sometimes 30 minutes in every event. The shift in questions is dramatic. And that is a few years ago, people wanted stock tips.

1:02:18Scott Galloway:It was greed. It was, they wanted to know, what do you think is the big tech stock pick for the next year? Now they want career insurance. And that is the things that, it was more about, it was less about greed and more about anxiety. People are talking about AI, housing, and quite frankly, whether we had a lot of questions from parents really basically saying, are my kids going to do as well or better than me? And we had over looked at the data, 800 audience questions. And if you were to summarize them in one sentence, it would be that people aren't worried about the economy. They're worried about their place and their children's place in it.

1:02:57Scott Galloway:So it's gone from greed to anxiety. And it's moving towards the greatest luxury in America is moving from wealth to certainty. And it just reminds me of happiness studies. And that is every year they rank the nations on who are the happiest. And every year, six of the 10 happiest places in the world are in Northern Europe. And I'm going to Stockholm next week. And whenever you go there in the summer, you sort of understand why they're so happy. And then you go back in the winter and can't figure out why they're happy. But it's not the beautiful weather or the beautiful people. What it is, is that happiness is not only a function of what you have, but an absence from the fear of things being taken from you.

1:03:45Scott Galloway:and that is it's great to have a lot of money, but what's even more important to happiness is not worrying that if your wife gets lung cancer, you're also gonna go bankrupt. And in the US now, we've decided to optimize the happiness for people who have a lot of money at the expense of the anxiety for people who are in kind of in the lower 90, especially I think the upper middle class who have more economic anxiety than they've ever had. And you could just feel that in the questions, people asking what should their kids do what what skill would you give your kids what is the likelihood my industry gets disrupted here so in a certain way it's it was kind of i don't want to say disheartening but but people are really people are just worried and and all of the catastrophizing coming out of the ai community which i think is basically fundraising You can feel it.

1:04:39Scott Galloway:It's, quote unquote, it's working. People are really, really worried. What about any optimistic notes to end our show? What did you feel good about coming out of that tour? The most rewarding thing is a chance to spend time with the team. You guys have a, you know, we have a great team. They're nice people. They really enjoyed it. That was nice. I think it was bonding for all of us. Hands down, though, the nicest thing about the whole tour was that in every city, we had parents who brought their teenage kids. And that's just very rewarding to see parents hanging out with their kids at our event.

1:05:19Scott Galloway:I mean, the most, I went to see Taylor Swift because I want to understand the phenomena and I wanted to go to SoFi. Yeah, me at a Taylor Swift conference. Does that make sense? Does that make sense? I just love how you have to qualify. I don't like her. I'm not interested in her music. I just wanted to go see what's happening societally and culturally. Yeah, it's true. But the thing that was worth it was when I was leaving, there's this gigantic platform, cement platform or deck or terrace at SoFi. And the driver who I was with, who takes people to and from the Swift concerts all the time, is like, look to your left when we get out here.

1:05:59Scott Galloway:You're going to see about 800 dads in cargo pants. And I looked to the left and there's this gigantic terrace full of like guys in their 30s and 40s, all on their phones in cargo pants. And he goes, it's dads waiting for their daughters. They didn't want to spend the money. You know, it's too expensive. So they buy a ticket. I thought it was so nice. It's too expensive. I'm like, people don't. I thought to myself, you know, all these guys are such good men. They come to the concert. They bring their 13-year-old daughter, but they don't want to spend the money on a ticket. So they wait outside for three hours and listen to the talking heads in REM or do whatever it is they do and then wait for their daughter to come out because they don't want to spend that kind of money on a ticket.

1:06:40Scott Galloway:Anyway, I found the most rewarding thing hands down was when people brought their young adult children. I thought that was really affirming. The Taylor Swifts of business. That's what we are. Yeah, that's what we are. Yeah. Well, we really appreciate everyone who came out. It was so much fun. I mean, honestly, just surreal from like the size of the crowds and seeing those lines and just seeing the fact that, you know, we started this thing like three or four years ago and we didn't really know what we were doing, or at least I certainly didn't know what we were doing. I mean, even just having Hillary Clinton come out on the stage with us and talking with her about the future of the economy, the future of America, speaking with Governor Pritzker, speaking with Ted Sarandos, the CEO of Netflix about Hollywood.

1:07:26Like, we've come a long way. And it's nice to have moments where you just observe that and you recognize that and you celebrate that. And that's what that was for us. um so again everyone who came out to the show i'm so grateful thank you so much and i can't wait to do it again next year we're gonna have to do it again next year we're gonna have to figure out where else to go i know a lot of people in denver strangely were upset that we didn't go to go there same with boston we probably have to hit dc next time uh i will note the chicago audience i wasn't sure if we'd have much of an audience there that was arguably the best audience i mean they went they went nuts.

1:08:07It was awesome. So long story short, that was a great time. And I can't wait. I can't wait for the next one.

1:08:14Scott Galloway:I'm glad. Let's take a look at the week ahead, Scott. We will see earnings from Oracle. We will see inflation data from the Consumer Price Index and Producer Price Index for May. And then finally, SpaceX is set to price its IPO Thursday night and go public on Friday. Scott, do you have any predictions? Well, I sort of made it. I think that the big three coming up um i'll be interested to see if they're i don't this isn't prediction i wouldn't be surprised if their pricing has to come down a bit but i think the biggest first day pop or the biggest initial pop on the first trade is going to be anthropic i think the momentum the riz is so much about an ipo is the narrative versus the numbers and the narrative is just strongest around anthropic and weakest among open ai and somewhere in the middle of spacex because you have elon He's a meme.

1:09:05Scott Galloway:He's great. He's great. You know, it is an exciting company. It's got kind of just it's every eight year old's dream, you know, space and rockets and technology. And I think some of those animal spirits will come in around SpaceX. But if I were to rank them, I think that Anthropic has the biggest first day pop. All right. My prediction is that these IPOs will mark the top. As I said, I think the amount of capital that they are demanding in these fundraising events is just going to be too much. And I think that there's too much supply that's going to outstrip the demand. I think that that's going to be the top, these companies going public, and then we'll see a period of relative underperformance over the next several months.

1:09:46So that would be my prediction.

1:09:50this episode was produced by claire miller and alison weiss and engineered by benjamin spencer our video editor is jorge carty our research team is dan shalon isabella kinsel chris no donahue and meer silverio jake mcpherson is our social producer drew burrows is our technical director and katherine dylan is our executive producer thank you for listening to profg markets from profg media if you liked what you heard give us a follow and tune in tomorrow for a fresh take on the markets

1:10:18Lifetimes

1:10:23You help me In kind reunion

1:10:35As the world turns And the dark flies In love, love, love, love.

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