Why the Grifter Economy Is Booming, Raising Money-Smart Kids and Forming Your Own Opinions

0:00Scott Galloway:Support for the show comes from VCX, the public ticker for private tech. The U.S. stock market started history's greatest wave of wealth creation. From factory workers in Detroit to farmers in Omaha, anyone could own a piece of the great American companies. But today, our most innovative companies are staying private longer, which means everyday Americans are missing out until now. Introducing VCX, a public ticker for private tech. Visit GetVCX.com for more info. That's GetVCX.com. Carefully consider the investment materials before investing, including objectives, risk charges, and expenses. This and other information can be found in the Funds Perspectives at GetVCX.com.

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2:59Scott Galloway:Welcome 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 officehours at prof2media.com. Again, that's officehours at prof2media.com. Or post your question on the Scott Galloway subreddit, and we just might feature it in our next episode. First question. Hey, Scott. My name is Jonathan. I'm a longtime listener and follower of your work, going back to the L2 Days and the Winners and Losers YouTube videos.

3:28You also wrote a really moving piece about losing your mother, and I lost my mom this year. And I found myself returning to that post several times. It genuinely helps, so thanks a lot. Here's my question. Lately, it feels like everything is for sale. Courses, retreats, digital products, life systems, often wrapped in promises of transformation, friendship, belonging. If you just pay enough, you can get these things. I understand the need to earn a living, but it increasingly feels like profit is crowding out genuine generosity and service. You clearly monetize your work, but it rarely feels extrative or grifty.

4:05How do you think about the line between sharing your gifts and talents in a meaningful way and building a business around them? And how do you personally distinguish between people who are genuinely trying to help others from those who are mostly selling aspiration? Thanks again for your incredible work and for modeling how to do this without becoming a part of what feels like a growing grifter economy.

4:27Scott Galloway:First off, Jonathan, hey man, I'm really sorry about your mom. I don't care. I knew my mom was dying. I knew she was going to die. She'd had a pretty good life. She did die too early. She was 6 '9". But when it happens, if you're close with your mom, as it sounds like you are, it's just devastating. I joke that I'm a middle-aged man who hasn't gotten over the death of his mother from 21, 22 years ago now. And I used to think, okay, there's something fucked up about me. Now I think, well, I hope my sons feel the same way about me. I hope when they talk about me, they get choked up because I meant so much to them.

5:04Scott Galloway:and, you know, anyways, I'm sorry, but that's not what your question is about. So you're being really generous. I'm a capitalist. We advertise. I'm very focused on money. I think it's a great scorecard. I enjoy capitalism. I enjoy building companies. I'm in the really fortunate position now where it's now my number two priority. It used to be my number one priority. How do I build this? How do I build enterprise value and sell this company? So I have economic security. Now I want to do something great that has a positive impact. I do want to make more money. I'm not, you know, I'm not a selfless person, but I also want to make the people around me.

5:44Scott Galloway:I want to provide them with economic security. I take a lot of pride in, I think we compensate somewhere between 50 and a hundred percent above market. And we're able to do that because quite frankly, we're monetizing my brand. I make a shit ton of money speaking and have a pretty big social footprint. But also it's a virtuous upward spiral because we pay people well, they stick around. What kills a company is constant churn. When your good people leave, if your best people leave all the time, you're just fucked. Whenever I talk to a service person, they say, you've been able to sell companies.

6:13I'm having trouble scaling my company.

6:16Scott Galloway:I'm like, show me your cap table. And they're like, what's a cap table? I'm like, who owns what? And they're like, well, I own the company, but I pay people. I'm like, okay, that's your fucking problem. You want people to act like owners, but you're not giving them equity. And the only way to hold on to great people is to give them equity and say, okay, this is the plan and I'm going to sell the company for three or five years. I have a liquidity event and you're going to make this much money. So I'm not answering the question. We have advertising. We do have some standards. I'm a capitalist. If we're on the fence, I'll usually take their money, but we don't do crypto.

6:49Scott Galloway:We try to be, you know, some of the stuff that feels really grifty. So I appreciate you saying that, but I still fall victim to some of the capitalist traps of other people. And I do think that wanting to make money and help people are not mutually exclusive. I think there are a lot of people who do really good work and make a really good living doing it. And capitalism has created a series of incentives that says, I can help you while you help me. And it might be an exchange of services or an exchange of money for goods or whatever it is. And that the butcher and the baker don't trade bread and meat out of philanthropy.

7:32Scott Galloway:They do it because they're specialized and they can offer each other something like this. So how do you model not being a grifter? You try to be authentic. You try not to take advantage of people, pay your people well. you know don't sell i don't know too many grifty wellness supplements is that right i think well i think some of the shit's okay i don't god i'm really flailing and struggling with this question um i would say just be transparent about your advertisers in the podcast business but I wouldn't, you know, I wouldn't be too, I don't think you need a purity test here. I think most people sense if you're trying to help them and as long as you're transparent about the cost of something, the benefits or risks of something, I don't see any reason why you can't make really good money while providing a service or helping other people as long as you're genuine about it and you're authentic and it's a product or a service you believe in.

8:41I don't, you know,

8:43Scott Galloway:I think that's the basis of why capitalism works. And I think 95 % of businesses do that. And the incentives of capitalism are, you've got to figure out a way to add value to people. Otherwise they're not going to buy your product. And you can generally tell when people are bad actors. So having a set of standards, trying to stick to those standards, And then charity begins at home. Pay your people really well and be transparent about how you're making money. Maybe that's it. Be transparent about how you're making money and disclose when you have financial incentives such that if you're in the media business, people don't feel like they've been had, that you weren't transparent about your incentives.

9:28Scott Galloway:And try and build a service that you think that at the end of the day, your listeners or your readers or your customers value and feel like they're getting a good exchange of value. Appreciate the question. Question number two. Question number two comes from Gustavo 2013 on Reddit. They say, hey there, Prop G. How do you go about teaching your kids about the value of money? My oldest is eight years old and likes to doing extra work and chores around the house for some cash so he can buy digital money on a game called Roblox. I'd love for him to use his hard-earned money on something better, but maybe I should leave this one up to him and learn on his own.

10:01Scott Galloway:What would you do? Oh my God, you're tracking. He's eight and he's connecting chores to work to something he likes. Can I hire this kid? Like at the age of eight, if he's been able to connect, this is what you want. You want them to connect. I feel like my job as a father is I'm a prefrontal cortex, right? Which is the off on executive decision CEO of the brain. Okay, you realize you need shoes to go to school, right? You realize you need this. Time waits for no man. If you don't get up right now, you're going to not be able to catch the tube and get to work or get to school on time. And if I get another tardy notice from your teacher, I'm going to lose my shit.

10:44Scott Galloway:Right? I'm their prefrontal cortex. Also, what I've tried to do is connect discipline and short-term sacrifices to long-term benefit. But, you know, let's study every day for two or three days, an hour a day, and then we're taking the test on Thursday. Oh, my gosh, you got a B plus or an A minus? It was the hour we did three days ago. I feel as if everything in our economy is focused on immediate gratification. And I'm trying to implement this thing of SLOPA. And that is efforts that provide a DOPA hit three days from now when you come home and tell your dad your quote unquote meeting on your civics or your civilization study.

11:29Scott Galloway:They have these weird greats here in London. Anyways, trying to do that. And also I'm trying to connect effort and expertise to money. One of my sons, I'm just so fascinated by this, has been buying and selling Pokemon cards and uses AI to try and determine the value and then goes online and tries to connect them and buy cards. And I've said, I will finance this. I will, here's 100 pounds. Show me what you can do. And then he does it for a few weeks, buys and sells. And we add up the cost to buy, the cost to ship to a seller and how much you made. And I'm trying to connect the effort. And then I say, OK, I'm going to take this money and upload your Greenlight card.

12:10Scott Galloway:and you can do more Deliveroo or whatever it is you want to do. Or, you know, trying to connect money to effort and also to connect money and the power of investing. And that is, I started, I told my son that for every dollar he invested in the market, I'd match it. So I think he invested, he got up to about$800 or$900. And then we check the markets every day to watch it. And I'm trying to teach him not to trade, to only buy companies he wants to hold for five or 10 years that trading would be, you know, eats up all its fees. Anyways, I'm trying to connect small acts of discipline every day to long-term DOPA and also connect investing or connect the long-term mindset with investing and wealth creation and also make the connection between effort and risk and making money and then being able to spend money on really cool stuff.

13:04Scott Galloway:I'm trying to make those, I'm a prefrontal cortex and I'm the connective tissue. I'm trying to make connections, if you will. But if you have an eight year old that's already figured out, I wanna do chores. First off, they say chores and sports are kind of the two building blocks of character. But if you have an eight year old that's already connected chores with money and getting to do something they want, I mean, trust me on this, your kid's gonna be mentoring us. Congratulations, you're doing something right. We'll be right back after a quick break.

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17:16Scott Galloway:Welcome back onto our final question from ChristineButterfly961 on Reddit. They say, Hey, Scott, I'm a big fan. As I listen and absorb your thoughts as well as the rest of the news I consume, I was wondering what your best process is for balancing your own malleability to people's opinions. I found that the most recent piece that I consume, read, listen to, et cetera, becomes my strongest opinion towards the topic. I want to be flexible to opinions, but also decisive and more opinionated myself. I'm a 23-year-old male, recent college grad, to give you some background. Thank you. Really thoughtful question.

17:49Scott Galloway:I have, you know, people's brains are like pillows and that is the last person or piece of media that sits on it that they leave that impression. A lot of people say our president's, one of our president's biggest flaws is his decisions are based on the last person he spoke to. So first off, you wanna find multiple media sources. I made a really stupid move the other day. I saw a story on Gavin Newsom saying that he agreed with the strikes and I reposted it. And then my podcast co-host, Kara Swisher said, this is fake news, you gotta take this down. So I make mistakes on my media sources all the time.

18:23Scott Galloway:But you want to have multiple media sources. You want to get multiple viewpoints. You want to challenge viewpoints. If you're about to make a big decision on anything, I didn't learn this when I was very age. I thought my job was to make a quick survey of the situation and then make a decision and talk people into my position or decision and double down. And you can almost sort of see when people cross the Rubicon and go so far out on a limb on a decision that there's no backing down. Be willing to back down. Ask people about their view. Why do they think that? And real leadership is listening and getting different viewpoints and arguing it the other way and then making better decisions.

19:00Scott Galloway:So what I do in my class is I have someone take one side. I set up a situation, case studies, Socratic method. I have one person take a position and I ask someone else to argue against it. And I find that respectful civil dialogue crafts better solutions. So, okay, what are we gonna do as a 23-year-old? if you read one thing and you have an opinion, I think it's kind of fun to go with AI and say, make an argument against this. And the argument against it may temper it, may talk you out of it, or may embolden or cement your views. It's dangerous to have one source. You want multiple sorts. There's a wisdom of crowds.

19:35Scott Galloway:Also, what I have found that I didn't learn when I was your age, don't make an important personal, financial, or professional decision without speaking to other people, people being plural, because everybody gets it wrong. You don't want to have just one person. Talk to, if you can, two-plus people about really important decisions, because it is very hard to read the label from inside of the bottle. But the fact you're even thinking this way at the age of 23, and you're a recent college grad, and you're a male, because there's now 40, 60, male to female, it means, my brother, you have an outstanding future, and you've already separated yourself from the pack.

20:17Scott Galloway:Very much appreciate the question. That's all for this episode. If you'd like to submit a question, please email a voice recording to officehoursofproptmedia.com. Again, that's officehoursofproptmedia.com. Or if you prefer to ask on Reddit, just post your question on the Scott Galloway subreddit and we just might feature it in an upcoming episode. This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez and Laura Janair. Kami Rieke is our social producer. Brad Williams is our editor. and Drew Burrows is our technical director. Thank you for listening to the Prop G pod from Prop G Media.

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