Scott on Losing His Dad, Family Traditions, and Handling Criticism

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2:07Welcome to Office Hours with Prop G. This is the part of the show where we answer your questions about business, big tech, entrepreneurship, and whatever else is on your mind. If you'd like to submit a question for next time, you can send a voice recording to officehoursofpropgmedia.com. Again, that's officehoursofpropgmedia.com. Or post your question on the Scott Galloway subreddit, and we just might feature it on our next episode. Question number one comes from Manuel Rapata on Instagram. Manuel asked, How are you doing seven months after your dad passed? Any advice for someone who just lost their dad?

2:35It's a generous question.

2:37Scott Galloway:The reality is I'm fine. I sort of mourn my dad's passing for the last five years of his life. And this is going to sound harsh, but my dad got a lot more from our relationship than I got from our relationship. My dad wasn't a bad father. I think my father... I've always said that if you rated childhoods in America, I would come in exactly at the 50th percentile. We were upper, lower, middle class, raised by a single immigrant mother, lived and died a secretary, didn't have much money. Money was an issue. But at the same time, I lived in Los Angeles. I had friends. You know, we weren't hungry.

3:20Scott Galloway:My mom loved me a great deal. You know, it just wasn't that bad. I played, you know, my parents got divorced and it was just like not terrible, not great. It was just sort of I would describe my childhood as remarkably unremarkable, just perfectly average. But my mom invested hugely in me and my mom's death. Really, I'm still 22 years after my mother's death. I am more impacted by it than my dad's death seven months ago. So, you know, my dad basically, you know, started his third marriage while he was still married to my mom, his second wife. And he tried. There were some moments where he did make an effort.

4:02You know, he'd haul his ass in a car over the hill to get me every other weekend. But then it was a different age. He just left for Ohio and he just wasn't very involved in my life. He tried.

4:13Scott Galloway:But we weren't, you know, we had a nice relationship. We were more like friends as adult men. but I still struggle with, I still miss my mom and I've decided it's a feature, not a bug and that I hope my kids 20 years after I pass still get emotional when they talk about me and miss me. But I'm fine. I appreciate the question. You know, I don't know if I have any real advice to you. I think this stuff is so individual but what I would say is try and register the emotions and just in general, you know, grieving,

4:55love's receipts are anxiety and grief. I get, I'm that parent.

5:03Scott Galloway:My 15-year-old wasn't home till really late the other night. I'm that parent now, up, anxious, you know, want him to have a good time, so don't want to bother him via text. But checking the Uber app to see if he's in an Uber or checking, you know, wondering when he's going to be home. And I basically can't sleep. And then I have another son. I've been a fucking mess this year over my son applying to college. I think I was more stressed out about it than him. And that's because for the first time in my life, I care more about something more than I care about me, someone or someone. And it's incredibly taxing.

5:38It's just, Jesus Christ, the anxiety and worry. But that's the receipts for love, and that is the receipts are the trade-off for purpose. For the first time in my life, I have purpose.

5:52Scott Galloway:My purpose as a younger man used to be, how can I be more rich and more awesome? And how can I have more experiences, more cool friends, more women in my life, more fame, or admiration. And it led to a series of deep kind of, or what I would say, kind of shallow and meaningless experiences. But as far as shallow and meaningless experiences got, it was pretty good at times. But anyways, that's neither here nor there. But for the first time, I really feel as if I have a purpose. And that's when, not even when my kids were born, but slowly but surely. I love what Frasier Crane said about his son or when someone else, by the way, Frasier Crane was a shitty father.

6:32Scott Galloway:Did you ever notice that? He sees his dad like once every two seasons. But he said something that really struck with me and it really held true for me. And that is, I didn't love my son. I wasn't in love when they first came out of the womb. I fell in love with my kids. Very selfish, struggled the first one or two years, but now they're my purpose. I feel in a weird kind of macabre sense that like, if I died tomorrow, it would be sad, but not a tragedy, because I feel as if I found my purpose. I know I'm having a positive impact on their lives. I think they're going to be patriotic, loving men.

7:09Scott Galloway:So that's why I'm here. I finally figured out, okay, why I'm here and what is my purpose. My dad never found that in terms of parenting, and I never felt that emotionally involved or committed to my father. And also he led a really nice life. He died at the age of 95 with basically his fifth wife was this really lovely Latino woman. He had a nice life. He swam every day up until the age of like 91. Last year was tough, but that's not terrible. but I would say that if you're struggling, know that that's because you loved your father so much and your father loved you and that's just part of the game that that is what we feel.

7:56The depth of our emotions and our commitment and our love for someone and how much they love us

8:02Scott Galloway:is directly correlated to the grief you're going to feel. So give yourself a statute of limitations If you're still sad in six months, okay, fine. If you find it's getting away of your life as it was with mine in terms of an ability to move on, then decide at some point you're going to seek outside help. Either talk to friends about it, go to grief counseling, go to therapy, whatever is involved to try and get unstuck, if you will. So, again, what do I wish for anyone moving forward? I wish them a great deal of joy, but also a great deal of grief. Because what that means is that you've had people in your life, as it appears you have, that you loved a great deal and loved you a great deal.

8:44That's just part of the game, my brother.

8:48Scott Galloway:Thanks for the question. Question number two comes from Elizabeth Buchanan on LinkedIn. What's the most important and meaningful tradition in your home that you believe hope your sons will continue if they have families of their own? That's a really good question. We do, as a family, spend a lot of time and energy on family trips. That's our thing. We do a lot of vacations together, and it's freaked me out because my oldest is all of a sudden saying, you know, he's 18, he wants to be with his friend. So, I don't know, travel a regular thing? One is a little bit more selfish, and that is we just had a question about my father.

9:26My dad got me working out when I was like nine years old. He started taking me on runs and he showed me this little Royal Navy fitness handbook that was this tattered thing. I wish I'd still have it. It's probably worth millions of dollars, but burpees, push-ups, pull-ups, air squats.

9:44Scott Galloway:And he used to take me running on the beach. We lived in Orange County for a brief time and he used to take me running. And because he was in the Navy and really, really was into his fitness. My father used to win 10Ks for like over age 50 groups in Arizona. And he did. My dad was, he kind of saw himself as being really funny and charming. Whenever he was called up to take a medal, he would go up with a lit cigarette. Kind of guy he was. But my dad got me working out really early. And something I do when my kids, the first thing, almost the first thing, like when my kid comes home from boarding school is I try and either work out with him or I take my sons on a run.

10:23Scott Galloway:But from a very early age, I got my sons working out and my, and I want them, it's paid dividends for me my whole life. It's been my, kind of my antidepressant and made me feel better about myself. Um, I am just, our family is just so extraordinarily genetically skinny, which no one feels sorry for. But if you're in high school and you're five, 10, 120 pounds with bad acne, it's not a great look. And it would have been even worse if I had not started lifting weights and running. But it's been a real gift. And I've tried to bestow that gift for my kids. So when my kids are home for the weekend, they know we're going to be working out.

10:58Scott Galloway:They know even if when we're traveling, we're going to do some pushups. And I hope and I believe that they will, like me and my sister, inherit that from their father. And it's just going to be hardwired into them. I'm sorry. I wish it was something a little bit more, I don't know, on Golden Pond. Do we watch a lot of streaming media together? Yeah, we watch a lot of football together, but I think people do that. I would say it's family vacations and working out. I'm like such a mediocre father right now. Thanks for the question.

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14:26Scott Galloway:Welcome back. On to our final question from JKSki on Instagram. They ask, how do you deal with public criticism of your work? Not well, but better. It used to really bum me out when it started about five, seven years ago. I started criticizing, saying some private companies were just stupid and made no fucking sense. And that they, I remember like there was some meditation app. I don't remember it, but it was raising money at a billion dollar valuation. I said, this is a podcast, and they've tried to reposition it as a tech company, and are raising money to a billion dollars. And I wrote a post on it.

15:03Scott Galloway:I wrote a post on Oyo. Remember that? The hotel company that was raising money. I wrote a pretty scathing piece of WeWork. And I sort of inflamed the venture community. And hell hath no fury like a venture capitalist whose portfolio companies of septic tank crap you call out before they have a chance to sell their shares. And I got pretty seriously, not seriously, like attacked by the venture capital community. And I remember it really rattled me at the time. It got me very upset and angry. and then I've kind of kind of grips with the fact that if you're going to be a quote-unquote thought leader or commentator and you're going to speak your mind and sort of my theme for 2026 is zero fucks given I'm going to say what I think is right I think bombing Iran is actually it's absolutely the right thing to do I think it's a historic opportunity with unbelievable asymmetric upside to bring long-term peace to the Middle East and create an incredible political and economic ally for the United States.

16:04That is a very unpopular opinion across my progressive

16:08Scott Galloway:brothers and sisters. Only 7 % of Democrats support that action or the military action in Iran. And there's so much pressure to sign up for political orthodoxy because online, they immediately want to position you as a far left or far right. And then what happens is if you diverge from that orthodoxy, you're treated as an apostate. We thought we could trust you. And they come like, you know, used to listen to Professor Galloway, but he's really come off the rails, you know, blah, blah, blah. If you have economic security and people who love you unconditionally, of which I'm blessed with both those things, you have an obligation to speak your mind.

16:46Scott Galloway:So the criticism hurts, but it hurts a lot less. And also I've come to grips with the fact that if you're not getting criticism or pushback on a regular basis, you're not saying anything. You're just stating the obvious or you're just playing to the algorithms, which I find really gross. I think a lot of people sort of just put out shit and thread shit because they know it'll get. They're just kind of piling on a viewpoint that everybody has like, well, that's not that that's not that original. And also, quite frankly, I get it wrong a lot. You know, I'm putting out 10 hours of podcasts a week trying to be funny, trying to be provocative, trying to be irreverent, trying to push the boundaries of the conventional wisdom or the narrative out there to get people to think.

17:32And occasionally I just get it wrong or I say something really fucking stupid. And you deserve critical feedback. What bothers me the most about critical feedback is not the criticism, it's the source. And that is, I believe about a third to 50 % of the really aggressive negative feedback are bots. I've ended up on the wrong list or a list or the right list of people who are supportive of Ukraine. And so there are troll farms and it's AI, it's dog lady 115 with seven followers. And it's always the same thing. Scott, I used to like your content, but this is wrong. And I was just like, OK, the platforms could could get rid of these fake bots.

18:15I believe everyone has a First Amendment right. I think anyone out there like me who's saying provocative things, should be subject to criticism and learn how to absorb it and learn from it. But I don't think bots and trolls should have First Amendment rights.

18:28Scott Galloway:That's the thing that bothers me most about the really vile criticism. It's like, do the other readers realize this is not real? This is not a real person. So I'm still coming to grips with it, but I do think at some point I'm just going to go dark. My dad said something that struck me or resonated with me, And he said that the key to happiness in America is to be rich but anonymous, because once you become sort of famous, there's industrial logic in shitposting you and criticizing you. And I have found a lot of online players, especially on TikTok, play to the algorithms where there's one person I've been following who just says, I hate and then name the person with the bestseller and attacks their philosophies.

19:13Scott Galloway:And people love that because the algorithms recognize a bestseller and it gets juiced and that person makes another, you know,$73 from AdSense or from their algorithms. So there's industrial incentives and economic incentives in not only checking back the powerful, which I think is healthy, but just constantly shitposting them. And as my footprint has grown, the level of criticism has gone up exponentially. potentially some of that is healthy because powerful people should be checked on what they say but some of it is also just a function of the algorithms where if people recognize who they're criticizing they click on it to see what they're saying about that person and it becomes sort of a downward spiral of i don't know just coarseness and ad hominem attacks so in some it still bothers me.

20:03It doesn't bother me as much as it used to. I try with the comments. I read the first 10 or 20 to get a feel for what people think about something. And then I stop reading it because it just doesn't, I don't ever want to be shaped by the comments. I want to be informed by them. But I think the algorithms and the orthodoxy of the far left and the far right, who are the loudest part of the political spectrum, want to try and shame you. You can't imagine the amount of shit I got when halfway through the Biden administration, I said, he should not run again. He's too fucking old. He's a feeble old man.

20:37He has no business being president at this point. Oh, my God. You don't understand the assignment. And I mean, just advocating for men.