Have No Fear

Scott explains what acquiring TikTok would mean for a company like Microsoft. He also answers listener questions about whether every brand can rebuild itself, why taking risks is the key to success, and how to decide if you should move closer to your family. Then, former presidential candidate Andrew Yang and Scott discuss Big Tech, antitrust, and higher education. Scott also finds out what Andrew has been considering since leaving the campaign trail. Algebra of Happiness: What would you do if you weren’t afraid to fail? Please take our quick survey to tell us how we can improve The Prof G Show: https://forms.gle/xVRfqCKrrNr9xzor5 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Scott Galloway?

  Episode 21, 21, the age you can legally drink and purchase alcohol in the US. I am a better version of me, easy upgrade, on alcohol. Alcohol gets a bad rap. I'm more loving, generous and outgoing. It's when I'm not drunk that shit comes off the rails. You can also gamble. You can gamble. Let's step up to the roulette wheel and argue over what is actually an odd number. In a canary yellow jacket and a kill, roll the big dog in Vegas. Go, go, go.

• 0:38Scott Galloway?

  Welcome to the 21st episode of the Prof G Show. We're doing things a little different today, but it's our medium so we can do whatever we want. We're excited for our guests. We sat down with Andrew Yang for two for one interview where he recorded us and we recorded him. Crazy synergy flywheel, his podcast, Yang Speaks. By the way, I think mine is much bigger. Granted, he ran for president, is smarter and will probably be in the cabinet, but I get more downloads on my pod. That's something. That's something. We talk about big tech, antitrust, higher education, and what Andrew has been thinking about since leaving the campaign trail. It's a longer interview, so we're going to break down the business news and bust into office hours a little bit more crisply today,

• 1:22Scott Galloway?

  such that we can get to our conversation with Andrew Yang. But first, I want to remind you that tonight we have our first town hall. That's right, the Prof G Show is going live tonight with a panel on higher ed. We'll have three panelists who will be discussing the future of higher ed and what to expect. And we'll be taking a ton of questions from parents and students. I would say two thirds of the emails I'm receiving right now have to do with questions around higher ed. I posted on my blog, Prof Galloway, a post about how I felt that universities were going to have a difficult time this fall because of the COVID-19. Pandemic and we've received a ton of questions, so we thought we'd do a town hall. Anyways, you can find all the details at propg.com/townhall.

• 2:05Scott Galloway?

  That's propg.com/townhall. We're expecting, no joke, between 4,000 and 5,000 people. We'll see you tonight. All right, let's talk about the week. Trump announced that he would ban TikTok by September 15th unless Microsoft or another very American, what's slightly American? A very American company buys it. Slightly American? Just slightly obese? What does that mean? Slightly innovative? What does that, what does that mean? You like sports, but you don't love them? Anyways, Microsoft said in a statement that it is committed to acquiring TikTok subject to a complete security review and providing proper economic benefits to the United States, including the United States Treasury. So by some projections, we're looking at 100 million Americans using TikTok.

• 2:50Scott Galloway?

  About a third, about a third of those users are teens. And Business Insider reported that Microsoft added 77 billion in market value on the Monday after it confirmed. On the Sunday, it was continuing talks about buying the platform. Microsoft had also taken control of the app's operations in the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Okay, what is going on here? Why is this so, why is this just so weird? It's as if the president went to one of those auctions at his kid's school where you get to play principal for the day and bid on playing principal and successful business person for a day. And basically said, okay, I want bigger chess pieces.

• 3:31Scott Galloway?

  I want to distract from a pandemic that I have handled more poorly than any world leader. And I want to pretend I know how to play business and decide not only that TikTok should sell by threatening or forcing them into a sell by threatening to ban them, but also suggest who should buy them and try and facilitate the transaction and then ask for, no joke, a commission on the transaction. We've evolved from the greatest experiment in the history of mankind called America to a real estate brokerage or some sort of boiler room. Think about the conversation with Satya. Hey, Satya, you know, TikTok is a real domestic threat. The Chinese stealing our intellectual property, which is true.

• 4:15Scott Galloway?

  The Chinese using data for government purposes that are sometimes at odds with other nations. Also true. So we're going to respond by doing to them what they did to us. They let our tech firms in just long enough to steal their IP and then kick them out. So we're going to one up them and threaten to ban them unless they sell to a domestic firm. And Satya Nadella, who couldn't be more opposite. This is an individual who has created $500 billion in market capitalization as opposed to the president, who supposedly if he had taken his inheritance and invested it in an index fund in the S and P, would have more money than he has now and is arguably the worst business person in the world. Is that hyperbole? No, supposedly his tax returns show that through the 90s, he lost more money than any individual taxpayer to date,

• 5:00Scott Galloway?

  meaning arguably he's the worst business person in the world. So here we have a guy who's like, okay, I need a distraction. I want to play business. I'm going to do what socialists do and decide that the state gets to divide who is the means of production and how to divvy up the spoils of the means of production. So this is some sort of weird cronyism meets socialism meets governing by id. It's hard to imagine Microsoft getting sort of an easier layup if in fact this goes through. Microsoft would end up with a huge consumer business. And why does Microsoft want this? Microsoft has the ultimate recurring revenue bundle, the Rundle in terms of Microsoft Office. But similar to four other most valuable companies in America,

• 5:42Scott Galloway?

  they want a beachhead around consumer and they haven't had much luck with consumer, whether it was their phone, whether it was Bing, whether it's MSN. But the opportunity to have the fastest growing social network amongst teens and then figure out a way. To get that data, start understanding patterns, maybe, maybe layer in some productivity tools, maybe use it as a means for developing content for the Xbox, you're usually going to figure out a way to monetize it. With respect to antitrust, it's sort of Sophie's Choice, because if Trump were to ban TikTok, okay, okay, that means a viable competitor is taken off the market and big tech continues to grow unfettered. Bad.

• 6:24Scott Galloway?

  But at the same time, thrusting it artificially into the arms of an existing big tech player is sort of not great for antitrust either, although one might argue that another formidable social media firm other than Facebook, if they combine it with LinkedIn or some of their other assets, is probably good for the ecosystem. I don't know. I don't know. But this is weird. I think it's unlikely that Microsoft is just going to get served up TikTok on a platter. I can imagine Apple deciding that they too might want into the social game. By the way, I think Apple is going to launch a search engine right after the DOJ or the court in one to two years decides to break up Google. And the only reason they haven't taken advantage of owning the rails into a billion and a half

• 7:07Scott Galloway?

  of the wealthiest handsets is that they don't want to give Google the ability to stave off antitrust by saying they have competitors from Apple. I think they're waiting to launch their search engine once the DOJ goes gangster on them. Anyways, they're all getting into each other's business. Microsoft obtains an enormous beachhead in what is the fastest growing app amongst the future, iYoungPeople. And Trump comes out of this, in my opinion, he comes out of this looking good, because what's good for the peaking duck, if you will, is good for the gander here, and that is if China continues to steal intellectual property, shouldn't we reciprocate? Probably a better outcome would be to maybe put in place or use our existing institutions,

• 7:48Scott Galloway?

  whether it's the DOJ or the SEC, and say, all right, TikTok, if you want to continue to operate in the US, you're going to have to have corporate governance and secure data, a secure data platform where the data doesn't leave US shores, where the governance and the board and directors and even the shareholders are centered here in the US, which might mean a spin of ByteDance of TikTok goes public in the US. Now, does that protect us from any possible outcome? No. But as we've seen even with American companies, it doesn't protect us from the Chinese or the Russians who are, as we speak, hacking all over the place in an attempt to get a vaccine. The best means of economic growth is theft, and we're seeing it everywhere. Corporate espionage from China, I believe,

• 8:33Scott Galloway?

  outweighs every form of espionage globally combined. So this is, in some ways, overdue reciprocal behavior. It's just as, as is the case with the trade war, the right intention, the right motivation, but absolutely heavy-handed, stupid, idiotic, makes no sense, not scalable remedies and solution, including, including a brokerage fee for coordinating this transaction. Donald Trump is a bad president, and he is a worse investment banker.

• 9:06Scott Galloway?

  Support for the show comes from Superhuman. The pace of modern work can be relentless. You're getting a constant influx of messages from a ton of different apps. You haven't closed all your browser tabs in a year. Everything seems urgent, and staying on top of it all feels like an impossible task. Superhuman Go is an AI chat that's always there when you need it, already aware of what you're doing and doesn't ask you to start from zero. Superhuman Go, from the makers of Grammarly, help you be the best version of yourself at work. It handles the repetitive stuff so you can focus on the work that only you can do. Whether you need to summarize an endless email thread or prep for a meeting that's happening in five minutes, Superhuman Go works inside the tools and sites you already use, your browser, inbox, docs, and your project tools. And its AI chat is available on the side of your browser, and it's always ready.

• 9:51Scott Galloway?

  No new tabs, no switching apps, no losing your place. This is AI that works with you, not on top of you, so that you have the time and brain space to solve the problems that matter. Check it out, find out more at superhuman.com.

• 10:08Scott Galloway?

  Support for the show comes from Upwork. Trying to scale your business? At some point, you're probably going to hit a point where you need some help. Sometimes, the best way to break through that is bringing in the right talent at the right time. Upwork can help. Upwork is a one-stop platform where you can find, hire, and pay expert freelancers across more than 125 categories. Whether you need specialized skills for a single project or extra support to keep up with demand, it's easy to connect with experienced professionals, review their work, and find the right fit. You can move faster without taking on the commitment of full-time hires. And for businesses that need the very best talent, Upwork Business Plus provides access to the top 1% of freelancers on the platform. AI-powered matching connects you with qualified candidates in under six hours, cutting down the time spent searching.

• 10:52Scott Galloway?

  Upwork also takes care of contracts, payments, and other administrative tasks, so you can spend less time managing logistics and more time focused on what's next. Visit upwork.com/profg right now and post your job for free. That's upwork.com/profg to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow. That's U P W O R K dot com slash prof G. Upwork.com slash prof G.

• 11:28Scott Galloway?

  Welcome back. It's time for Office Hours. If you'd like to submit a question, please email a voice recording to [email protected]. First question.

• 11:38Speaker 01

  Hey, Prof G. My name is Kristin Kohler-Burrows. I live in Scarsdale, New York. And yeah, I don't fit into your target customer profile. I'm 50, white, female, but please, please, please do not call me a Karen. As I tell my kids, I'm far from one. In fact, I'm gonna have to get angry if you do call me one. Wait, I guess that's kind of being like a Karen. Anyway, I'm a huge fan of yours. You're insightful, smart, commentary-backed by opinion and fact, and wrapped up in humor, and delivered entertainment that I learned from. I do think, however, that all of that negative bravado is really a cover for the huge giver that you are.

• 12:22Speaker 01

  Anyway, I digress. My question: Do you think every consumer-driven brand or business can be turned around, transformed, and rebuilt? Is the answer to that question different if a brand and business has been mismanaged? Or is there simply a natural life cycle for any brand that despite good leadership and management, the brand will simply run its course? And lastly, what in your mind is an example of a great consumer brand turnaround? And can those same tenets of that turnaround apply today? Thank you again, and I look forward to your next show.

• 13:02Scott Galloway?

  Chris, and you're salty and generous. Thank you. Those are really, that was a very nice thing to say, and I appreciate it. I'm, I am, I don't like people, but I'm desperate for their affirmation, which I realize makes no sense. But anyways, thanks for the kind words. So first off, can any consumer brand be turned around? I think you'd rather have a decent brand in a decent category than with bad management, because bad management is easier to replace than a company that's in a challenged category. I don't care how good Mary Barra is. I think General Motors is going to struggle. I think the world is moving away from internal combustion cars, and they don't have the access to cheap capital of Tesla to build a better electric car. I think you're going to have, in department stores, multi-branded retail.

• 13:46Scott Galloway?

  I think you can have an outstanding CEO. Nordstrom is one of the best-run companies, I think, in America. And I think they're going to struggle. They'll probably do better than the rest. They'll be the tallest midget in department stores, but they're just in a terrible place. Whereas a company like Square, a company like PayPal, where we're going to contactless payments, they could have just a competent CEO or even a part-time CEO and do really well. So I don't think every company can be turned around. A lot of it also comes down to where in the life cycle of a company is, and what is your approach to creating shareholder value? So for example, I'm an investor and on the board of the nation's largest Yellow Pages company. Now, they are morphing into a CRM company.

• 14:28Scott Galloway?

  They're taking advantage of their asset, which is relationship with hundreds of thousands of small business, to offer them a CRM SaaS-based product, and that is working. But distinct to that, what is also working is cutting costs faster than revenues are declining. Typically, firms that are in structural decline don't go out of business as quickly as people think. So Blockbuster, everybody knew they were going to go out of business, but everyone said they were going to go out of business in 1999. So as a result, you could pick up a Blockbuster franchise for two to three times cash flow. And they went out of business, but they went out of business about 15 years later. So you would have made a lot of money had you bought this distressed asset. I find in terms of parts of the food chain, and I've invested and worked in every one of them,

• 15:09Scott Galloway?

  whether it's seed, venture, growth, IPO, public company, mature company, distressed or declining company restructuring. I find that the place that gets the greatest return on investment, if you will, or the best place to invest if you're just an economic animal, is in the distressed portion. Why is that? We want to hang out with Tom Brady and Gisele and Shawn Mendes. We're attracted to youth. We're attracted to growing companies. We're attracted to innovators. As a result, there's an overabundance of capital, both human and financial, which drives down returns. Whereas nobody wants to be involved with a Yellow Pages company. No one wants to be involved in a company that is in decline, except for people who love money.

• 15:54Scott Galloway?

  I think distressed credit investing is a fantastic place to be in the ecosystem, but you have to go into the business recognizing that, okay, Nana's left a good life. We're going to try and make her comfortable. We're going to cut her costs and we're going to try and get as much out of her life as possible as opposed to hair plugs and botox and surgery after surgery, trying to pretend that Nana is ever going to be 15 or 18 again. Now, having said that, some companies have made remarkable comebacks. Michael Dell said in 1999 that Apple should be broken up and sold for scrap or closed down. And Apple made what is probably one of the most remarkable recoveries in history. Then you might think about IBM. Microsoft is right up there in terms of showing elephants can dance.

• 16:37Scott Galloway?

  We've seen some niche brands come back pretty strong. But I would argue, the first question, do you want to reinvent yourself? Sometimes just milking the brand, deciding that this brand's time has come and gone and we're going to milk it and cut costs and squeeze it for cash. That oftentimes is an incredible strategy from a shareholder standpoint, but we don't like death. We have trouble wrapping our minds around death. So we have a tendency to throw a lot of good money after bad and try and reanimate companies and make Nana a teenager again. Kristin from Scarsdale, a thoughtful question. I appreciate your support of the show. I appreciate the kind words. And anyways, I just want to surround you with a white light.

• 17:22Scott Galloway?

  And if we were in person, I would make uninterrupted contact with you for five seconds as a reward. Just kidding, Kristin. Just kidding. Thanks again. Next question.

• 17:32Speaker 02

  Hi Scott, my name is Clinton. I live in New York, although I'm from Sydney, Australia. And I can attest to the efficacy of your advice. Living in a place like this, you are more rewarded for individual grit and talent in ways unlike I would be in Australia, although I am looking forward to returning to the modern world at some point. I work at a branding agency and we have a lot of property clients. And their confidence over this time has really ebbed and flowed quite a bit. And I want to ask you, how do I encourage them to be more courageous in this time? And to see opportunity in some of the risks? Thank you so much. I love what you do.

• 18:11Scott Galloway?

  Clinton, thanks for the kind words and congratulations on living in probably what are the top two cities in the world from a lifestyle standpoint for different reasons. I think Sydney is a mix of incredible people and the most beautiful city that's on an 80 degree beach. A lot of people say San Francisco is the most beautiful city on a beach, but let's be honest, the weather just sucks there. Whereas Sydney is sort of San Francisco with an extra 10 or 15 degrees and just more maverick, fun, irreverent people. I love Australia. If it wasn't so damn far like everyone else, I would live there. But anyways, anyways. As it relates to trying to convince your clients to be bolder, I'm a big fan of benchmarks and that is looking at the biggest success stories.

• 18:55Scott Galloway?

  There really isn't an organization, whether it's Apple deciding to put enormous money into stores, whether it's Amazon putting money into a phone and failing. You know, typically companies that are in sort of a slow burn have two choices. And that is to either acknowledge that they're in a slow burn and per the previous question, decide to milk the firm and that's a decent strategy. But if they want to be a growth firm, if they want the firm, and a lot of times, property companies are privately owned companies, and if they want to pass it on to their next generation, there's a certain level of discomfort or uncomfortable risks that are lock, sock, and barrel part of outsized returns. And I think of it personally. I think about the

• 19:37Scott Galloway?

  time I met the mother of my children. I was at the pool at the Raleigh Hotel, and I saw this woman, and I thought, I promised myself before I leave here, I'm going to speak to that woman. And by the way, I tell this story in my class. And in the middle of the day, the hot sun, a woman is sitting by the pool with another guy and another woman to walk up sober, and that's the key part. That was the hard part, sober and open, is not easy. And it just would have been much easier to just, to just leave. Anyways, long story short, seven years later, our first kid, his middle name is Raleigh, named after the hotel where I met her. And what I tell my kids is without taking an uncomfortable risk,

• 20:19Scott Galloway?

  nothing wonderful is ever going to happen to you. So if you don't have the discipline to put yourself in positions where you take uncomfortable risks, then you're never going to have outsized returns. You're never going to have really wonderful things happen to you. And I think the same is true in businesses. You don't want to take dumb risks. You want to do your homework. You want to look at benchmarks. But if it's a property company, whether it's investing in a new asset class, whether it's pivoting to making a huge investment in online and technology to try and scale the company faster, there are just uncomfortable risks you are going to have to make if you want true greatness. The future belongs to the quick, and it belongs to the bold. And part of that, again, is taking uncomfortable

• 21:01Scott Galloway?

  risks. Thanks for the, thanks for the question, and greetings to you and yours in Sydney. Next question.

• 21:09Speaker 03

  Hey, Scott. Neil from Seattle. I work for a big tech company here, one that you talk about often, but this isn't about that. I'd like to ask you an algebra of happiness question. I read your book in a day, and it was an emotional experience for me. My dad died of cancer about two years ago. My mom now lives alone in Las Vegas, not far from where you spent time with your mother. Sorry for your loss. My mom is in good health, but approaching her eighties. The pandemic, combined with feeling burned out and too into the rat race of making money. I'm thinking about making a move to be closer to her and my wife's family. I'm thirty-four, have a great wife and a couple beautiful daughters. And my wife is supportive of the idea. Frankly, she's quite excited.

• 21:51Speaker 03

  I'm concerned about the future impact to my career if I were to work remotely for my company. And the job prospects in Las Vegas don't align well with my experience. I know you took a detour in life to support your mom and it was incredibly meaningful to you. Curious to hear your advice. Thanks so much.

• 22:10Scott Galloway?

  So Neil, I hear this question and I well up. This was such a weird time in my life when my mom was sick. You know, it was just me and my mom growing up. So when she got sick, I decided that I was gonna, I was gonna reciprocate, you know, a fraction of the generosity and love and focus she levied on me the first twenty-five, thirty years of my life. And as you referenced, I moved in with her in her retirement community to manage her healthcare. She had said that one thing she wanted was to pass at home. And I was commuting back and forth from New York Monday through Thursday with my mom. And then I would go back to New York on Fridays to get some work done and go down to Miami.

• 22:54Scott Galloway?

  And I was just traveling kind of around the clock. So just a couple of things. One is, I think you want to make this move. I think it needs to be, you need to approach it holistically. You have daughters and a wife, which I didn't have. So for me, it was a fairly, what I'll call the exit cost of leaving or putting my life on hold and moving to Vegas for eight months weren't that great. I would ask yourself a couple of questions. One, are you just looking to move to Las Vegas for a cost of living, to stop howling in the money storm, to get out of Seattle? Do you see the opportunities, even at remote, to kind of arbitrage a urban Seattle salary with a Las Vegas cost of living as a huge opportunity? At the same time, you have to balance that against what is your career looking like at the age of thirty-four?

• 23:38Scott Galloway?

  And how important is executive sponsorship? Because executive sponsorship is a function of proximity. And what is, how does your wife feel about moving? There's a lot of moving parts here. And I think it's an open, honest conversation and writing things down around what are the upside, what are the downside? I think in terms of managing your mom's illness, I don't think on its own. Because it doesn't sound, it sounds like she's getting older, but it doesn't sound as if, you know, her passing is imminent, if you will. I think you should think about, first decide what is best for you and your family. And then decide, maybe if you're going to stick in Seattle, if it makes sense to figure out a way for your mom to spend more time with you there.

• 24:19Scott Galloway?

  And if not, would you move to Las Vegas to be closer to her and your wife's family? But I wouldn't make this move just out of concern for your mom. Seattle's not that far from Las Vegas. You can get there a lot. She can get to your place a lot. And I think what any mother wants, I think what any dad wants now, having kids of my own, when I think about the end, is that really more than anything, you just want to know that your kid had turned out to be a productive, decent person. And you'd want to know that they loved you immensely. It's clear, based on what you've told me about your career, that you're the former. And just the fact that you're thinking this way is evidence that you love your mother immensely.

• 25:02Scott Galloway?

  And that in itself is a lot of comfort for your mother. She wouldn't want you to totally reconfigure your life around hers. Not yet, not at this point. So do what's best for you and your family. She's part of your family, but do what's best for you and your family, including, including your children's grandmother. Thanks for the question. I want to say God bless you. I don't believe in God, but I just, I, I, I hope the best for you and your mother. And I will say that for the first time in my life, not being selfish for an extended period of time and focusing on my mom's healthcare and wellbeing, is, other than maybe my kids, the thing I hold on to that I'm most proud of,

• 25:45Scott Galloway?

  it was really the first time in my life that I had put someone else before my own needs, and it was very rewarding. Best of luck to you and your mother. We love your questions. Keep sending them in. Again, if you'd like to submit one, please email a voice recording to [email protected]. We'll be right back after this break for our conversation with Andrew Yang. Support for the show comes from Vanta. As AI adoption grows, so does your company's security risks and requirements. New frameworks, audits, and vendors keep piling on, but your team isn't getting any bigger. Most compliance tools promise automation, but you're really stuck doing all the work by hand, chasing screenshots, validating controls, and playing catch-up when audit season comes around again. Vanta works differently.

• 26:29Scott Galloway?

  The Regentic Trust platform is built to scale with you, not slow you down. With over 1,400 automated tests across 400-plus integrations, Vanta collects evidence and monitors your controls year-round, cutting your audit prep by 82%. Plus, you can access the Vanta agent everywhere you work, whether your team is in Vanta every day or living in tools including Claude or Cursor. Want proof? Over 16,000 fast-growing companies like Ramp, Ryder, and Harvey save time and resources while scaling fast with Vanta. Learn more at vanta.com/profg and get $1,000 off. That's spelled V-A-N-T-A dot com slash prof G for $1,000 off.

• 27:22Scott Galloway?

  Okay, we're back. Here's our conversation with entrepreneur and former presidential candidate Andrew Yang. Andrew Yang is consistently referenced as the most original thinker that ran for president. You also get the sense, listening to the guy, that he's genuine. I mean, think about this. He's a successful entrepreneur, but not crazy successful. He's not a billionaire. He's never been elected to office. And he decided early and often that he was going to run for president and came up with these breakthrough ideas that catalyzed the conversation. So even though he didn't get the presidential nomination, it would be hard to argue that Andrew Yang hasn't made the country a better place. The discussion around UBI has opened a more honest conversation, or catalyzed a more honest conversation around empathy and how we level up.

• 28:08Scott Galloway?

  A third of America that can't go six weeks without a paycheck and is incredibly vulnerable. And when we don't make the investments in the maintenance of our society, we take an entire cohort of our nation and put them at risk, especially, and we're seeing that now in spades with the novel coronavirus. So Andrew Yang, an original thinker, earnest, obviously a very decent man, entrepreneur, a husband and father of two. Here's our conversation with Andrew Yang.

• 28:37Speaker 04

  I can't tell you how excited I am for this week's Yang Speaks. It's Professor Scott Galloway. He's a brilliant entrepreneur, author. He's one of the people I look to when I'm trying to figure out what's coming up next. So thrilled to talk to him about the future of education, tech, healthcare in a time of coronavirus and a lot of other things. Welcome, Scott.

• 29:03Scott Galloway?

  Thanks very much, Andrew. And this is the Prop G Show. And I want to welcome our guest, Andrew Yang. Andrew hasn't been up to much recently, so I don't know what we're going to talk about. But anyways, we're doing this a little bit different. It's a back and forth. It's a, it's a, it's one plus one equals three. And we're going to have a conversation here. But anyways, Andrew, I will let you kick it off.

• 29:24Speaker 04

  Well, Scott, your blog is something that I read as a sign of what's coming because you're, you're like a great combination of numbers and humanity. And you also are a parent like I am. You're concerned about a lot of the same issues I am around tech's impact on our kids' mental health. And you're postulating, which I agree with, because it just makes sense, that the tech companies are going to start moving into education in this next number of weeks and months, in part because a lot of the universities are going to be struggling, but in part because the tech companies have a mandate to grow. And if you're going to try and grow, there are only limited industries that can afford

• 30:06Speaker 04

  you a big enough dollar sign to meaningfully impact a trillion dollar company. So you're a professor, your day job, in addition to the 5 million other things that you're doing. And you've written extensively already on like the future of education. I'd love to talk about what you see as tech's role in the future of education as someone who's on the inside.

• 30:26Scott Galloway?

  Thanks for that, Andrew. Yeah, so I think if you look at any public company makes an implicit promise to shareholders that they'll double their stock price in five years. Otherwise, investors will go buy Zoom or Peloton or something else. So if you're Apple or Google, that means you've got to grow your top line, assuming some operating leverage, by anywhere between, call it 100 and 200 billion dollars over the next five years. So if you realistically have to grow your your top line by 100 to 200 billion, what that means is there's just very few game you can actually go hunting for. You could say, well, the auto industry. Well, that's a low margin, difficult business that's already pretty efficiently run. You could say, well, government. Well, okay, are these companies going to start getting into government services? The two obvious

• 31:11Scott Galloway?

  ones are healthcare, 17% or 18% of US GDP, high margins, people aren't very satisfied. And then education, what is a, you know, a multi-trillion dollar industry globally, 600 or 700 billion domestically. So I would argue to big tech, it's not if they'll get into tech, it's when and why? Because they have to. They have no choice. There's very few industries that that offer just the sheer amount, the carcass, the size that can sate their appetite. So I think that they will go into into education in the short term. It'll be around supplying tools as universities are all of a sudden faced with 20, 30, 50, in some cases, 100% of their classes going online. They'll be serving them as vendors. You're already seeing these companies ramp up their educational offerings. And then

• 31:56Scott Galloway?

  we might see, or we will see, I think, them do what Google just announced, and that is they'll get into the business of certification. Because at the end of the day, the $240,000 in tuition that NYU asks households to pay, it's, yeah, it's for the experience, yeah, it's for the education, but the real ROI is in the certification. So my question to you, my question back to you, Andrew, on inauguration day, do you put in place a plan? Do you fund the DOJ and break these guys up?

• 32:25Speaker 04

  We gotta do something, for sure. And it's one thing I'd love to talk to you about is that if you share our diagnosis of the fact that these companies are running roughshod on many things that you'd consider the public domain, whether it's the way we get information, or our democracy, or again, our kids' mental health, like, there needs to be a real government role. One of the things that I said on the trail was like, we need 21st century solutions for 21st century problems. And I'm not sure if you just go around saying, "break them up", that's going to do the trick. Though, in certain cases, 100%, a lot of these businesses need to divest parts of themselves. Like, you shouldn't have Amazon white labeling their

• 33:07Speaker 04

  own stuff, and then essentially crowding out, like, other folks who are trying to sell to consumers. You can't have these companies just gobbling up anything that could become a potential competitor, even in an adjacent space. Like, if you had a monopoly in the old days, you would say, "Look, okay, you're AT&T, or whatever, like, we're not gonna let you also just start buying into retail, or electronics stores, or whatever the heck it is, like, that's like, adjacent to you in the way that we've let Alphabet just freaking get into anything under the sun." Like, they've got like, a near-quasi-monopoly on search engines, and advertising, and the rest of it. So maybe there needs to be some limit. But it's bad for innovation, it's bad for us all, if the business model of

• 33:51Speaker 04

  every company in Silicon Valley is to get annoying enough so that one of the trillion-dollar behemoths will just throw some stock at you, and then, like, gobble you up. So that's not where we should be. And if you look around, so many people, and I'm an entrepreneur, you're an entrepreneur, like, I like people pursuing entrepreneurial opportunities, but the market's not going to afford any kind of counterweight to what's going on with, like, your kids', you know, addiction to screens, or my kid's addiction to screens, or whatnot. Like, there's not, like, a market-based solution. And so, we have to do the impossible, which is get the government to get its shit together, which is like, and as a practical

• 34:36Speaker 04

  problem solver, like, that's not appealing either, in those sets. You're like, "Oh, really? Like, I have to rely on government to do this thing?" But yeah, we have to rely on government to do this thing, because there's no realistic alternative, in my opinion.

• 34:48Scott Galloway?

  Let's talk about antitrust. We actually have in the US a proud legacy of antitrust. We broke up, you know, I think it was Teddy Roosevelt got elected by the railroad guys and then turned around and said, "I love you, but I gotta break you up because you're bad for America." We broke up AT&T, we broke up the aluminum guys. And antitrust is one of the few government actions that we sort of get, the government gets right all the time. If you look back, there's very few breakups where you look back and think the government screwed up.

• 35:13Speaker 04

  Oh yeah, we shouldn't have done that. Yeah, yeah. When it happened, it was right.

• 35:17Scott Galloway?

  It's like the one thing where government's batting a thousand. Why is it that America has fallen out of love with antitrust?

• 35:24Speaker 04

  I'd say there are three things, Scott. The first is that the 20th century framework was built around anti-competitive pricing. And if you're the Amazons or the Googles of the world, you're like, "What do you mean? Like, I charge less than everybody. I'm not gouging anyone." And so if you use price as your framework, then there doesn't seem to be a problem, even though there are massive negative externalities, you know, that aren't accounted for in price. The second thing is that our government has now become bought and sold by lobbyists. And so even though tech was a little bit late to the game in lobbying, like, what do you have on the other side? Nothing, really. Like, you have a clueless legislature being like, "Well, I don't understand technology."

• 36:07Speaker 04

  And then you have the tech lobbyists whispering in their ear being like, "Hey, if anything, you need us to quote-unquote innovate more." So there's not like... And the third thing is that I think our entire society has become collectively brainwashed into like an efficiency culture. That efficiency is good, that the tech companies in particular enable efficiency, and that standing in their way is inefficient. And hand-in-hand with that has been this complete mistrust of government as this paragon of inefficiency, of bloat bureaucracy, et cetera. And so culturally, we are not disposed towards trying to break up these tech companies

• 36:49Speaker 04

  that we think have improved our lives, particularly in contrast with what we think about government a lot of the time. Now, I think that these things- They're all wrong. Like, I think you're right that antitrust has historically been a real force for progress, balanced progress, not just extreme progress. And the example that Roger McNamee uses is like, look, you had these chemical manufacturing companies. It took us a little while to figure out that dumping chemicals like into landfills and streams was really bad and we needed to regulate it. This industry is relatively new and it's taken us a little bit of time to realize just how noxious, for example, the advertising-driven revenue model is for social media and a bunch of other things.

• 37:32Speaker 04

  But we need to figure it out and then we need to take affirmative steps. And my great hope for this time is that we're going to actually embrace more aggressive, ambitious solutions than we would have considered pre-crisis. That's the silver lining. One thing I campaigned on was that it's unconscionable that higher education has gotten two and a half times more expensive over the last number of years. And one of the jokes I used to pose was like, has it gotten two and a half times better? And that always got a laugh because people were like, it has not really gotten two and a half times better.

• 38:04Scott Galloway?

  No.

• 38:05Speaker 04

  And then I posed the question to the folks in the audience and was like, hey, why has it gotten so expensive? And then they think about it for a minute. And then I say, did we hire lots of professors? And they're like, no. You know, did we build lots of new buildings? And they were like, maybe. And then I say that the real driver is the fact that we've hired 150% more non-faculty administrators at these universities. They've become these like overgrown bureaucracies themselves. And it's become this hidden tax on people, on the middle class, on folks who are trying to to give their kids a better life. And that's been building up for decades, in part because any, any college every year just looks around and says, okay,

• 38:48Speaker 04

  how much are we going to increase our prices by this year? And so you have this inflationary effect that's unique to healthcare and education. And then families felt like they had no choice but to pay. So then. The government said, don't worry about it. We've got you. Here are some loans. So we're now up to 1.6 trillion in student loan debt. And I love the fact that you work for NYU, but you're honest about the fact that, look, these university administrators have very clear financial incentives. Like foregoing $400 million in tuition is like, you know, like it would wreck many of these institutions. And so you have many schools that are bravely putting up

• 39:30Speaker 04

  signals saying, well, hey, we're going to reconvene in the fall. And then you look at it and say like, is this what you would do if this wasn't like an existential problem for your school to forego tuition revenue for a semester? And I would love to hear your ideas on how we can somehow help the university system become more cost conscious and invest in things that'll actually improve kids' educational outcomes as opposed to their US News and World Report rankings.

• 40:01Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, we are definitely brothers from another mother. I mean, we, your summary, it took me two years to get to the, to the summary you just articulated in about three minutes. But look, we live in a capitalist society and having more money means more opportunity for your kids, access to better healthcare, access to a broader selection of mates. It's just a wonderful thing to have more versus less money in a capitalist society. And all of us fall victim to that in the sense that when it's, you're first and foremost going to fix your own oxygen mask. And there's a belief that universities are these very noble institutions where we wear cardigans, watch PBS and pet our Labrador and don't think about money. And professors and administrators want the same economic security as everyone else.

• 40:46Scott Galloway?

  So by a combination of this dictum or this gestalt where everybody has to get a college education, where we constrain supply and become luxury brands as opposed to public servants. We consistently have been able to raise prices through this kind of cartel, as you mentioned, twice as fast as inflation. And we justify that we're doing it for the right reasons. But the reality is many universities, especially the elite universities, have become hedge funds that provide classes to the children of their investors. And then we wipe Vaseline over the lens of the caste structure that has been, that higher education has become by letting in some freakishly remarkable middle-class and lower-income kids. And to try and make ourselves kind of the neo-sporn of our guilt.

• 41:30Scott Galloway?

  This is, it's morally corrupt. Spring used to be a time of nervousness, but excitement about where your kid was going to college. Now it's become despair and anxiety around, how do I tell my little girl that on a fireman's salary, and maybe my wife is a doctor or nurse, that we can't afford to send her to Tulane? How do you have that conversation? How do you, how do you feel like you're failing the American dream? Because you can't afford, after working your ass off to income, you can't afford to send, or you make a worse decision, and that is your kid doesn't get into the top school because they take pride in rejecting nine out of 10 applicants.

• 42:14Scott Galloway?

  And worse yet, they go to a second-tier school where they don't get nearly the upside because corporations still look at those universities in terms of evaluating your currency in the marketplace and how much they're going to pay you. But you incur elite university-level debt. It's just, this is one of the most, in my opinion, ugly parts of our society right now. And it's happened incrementally because like anyone else, university administrators and professors want to live the same great life as anyone else. What do we do about it? I've been spending a lot of time with Chancellor Block, who is the chancellor of my alma mater that receives more applications than any university in the world, and that's the University of California, Los Angeles. And I've come to the conclusion that these institutions are almost constitutionally incapable

• 42:58Scott Galloway?

  of cutting costs between tenure, between the Rolex-ification of their facilities. It is very hard for them, and they haven't had to cut costs for 40 years. It's almost impossible. What we could do is through a mix of small and big tech, potentially, potentially dramatically expand capacity. If you were to take 50% of your courses online, and there are a lot of courses that would be fine online, or a lot of sessions where there isn't a lot of interaction that you could facilitate online. If you take half your classes online, you effectively, Andrew, double the size of the campus. So what I would like to see, and what I would hope individuals like you that might serve in a cabinet, or be in a position of authority and power someday, is could we have some sort of grand bargain where we go to governors?

• 43:43Scott Galloway?

  Let's go to Governor Newsom and say, increase the University of California budget by 20% and we're going to dramatically decrease the cost per student educated through the use of small and big tech by expanding our capacity. And we're going to take UCLA back from a 13% admit rate to where it was in the 90s, 20 or 25. We have to dramatically expand our land-grant public universities' capacities such that we can take good, maybe not remarkable. I mean, I don't know where you went to school. I was a remarkably unremarkable kid. And the reason I'm here speaking to you today is because UCLA let in a third of its applicants. And they could say to the son of a single immigrant mother who lived and died a secretary,

• 44:26Scott Galloway?

  let's be honest, you're not great, but we like your profile, you're a son of California, we're going to let you in. They don't have the luxury of doing that now. They don't have the luxury of letting in kids with remarkable futures. They have to only let in the remarkable. So I think it's about dramatically expanding through the use of technology freshman seats and also breaking this wheel where academics and administrators have become drunk on exclusivity. Andrew, every year, the deans of the top schools, including mine, get up and boast that we rejected 88% of our applicants. That's tantamount to the head of a housing shelter. Bragging that he or she turned away nine in 10 people who showed up last night. We have lost the script. We need to move back to being public servants as opposed to luxury brands.

• 45:11Scott Galloway?

  We need to embrace technology and have almost like a martial act like feel such that we take capacity for our great public systems, University of Texas, Michigan, University of California, Cal State, CUNY, Florida State Systems, and expand their seats by 30 or 50%. I think a crisis is a terrible thing to waste. I think there's an opportunity here to move back to where we were, where kids who are unremarkable have remarkable opportunities through the upward lubricant that is higher ed. Anyways, that's my rant, Andrew. That's my rant.

• 45:44Speaker 04

  We have to come clean about the fact that, and this is something you argue is like, look, a lot of these schools are essentially just becoming caste system organizers. It's not like when a parent gets, you know, or when the kid gets the admissions letter from the school, the parent is then like, ooh, that's great because here are like the 10 professors I want you to study with. Like, they're not actually paying attention at that level. They just know the brand of the school.

• 46:09Scott Galloway?

  That's right.

• 46:10Speaker 04

  If you, like, we need to examine this from soup to nuts. Like, you look at it and say, okay, why is it four years? Why does it cost this much? And to your point, like, why are you getting rewarded for turning people down? Like, aren't you supposed to be a public good? I love the fact that you've identified public universities as the place to launch this from because it makes the most sense. And they should be growing their seats. Like, instead of a proportion of people you reject, it should be looking up society wide and saying, okay, how many 18-year-olds do we think are like approximately the right fit for what we're going for in terms of a public education? And then you should be rewarded for educating a higher proportion of those people, which

• 46:54Speaker 04

  is like the reverse of the way they get rewarded now.

• 46:57Scott Galloway?

  What? You have ideas. You clearly have, you're a unique thinker. I think coming out of the presidential election, if they said, who has the most unique, most creative ideas, you would win, you would be at the top of that poll. What is the most effective platform for you over the next couple of years? Is it to be in the cabinet position? Is it to run for governor or senate? Or is it to position yourself for another run? In four years, like what is, or as a media personality, what is the platform that helps you get the most traction around these ideas?

• 47:31Speaker 04

  I'm just trying to solve the problems in real time. And this is a catastrophic time in the country. So I'm going to be attracted to whatever position helps me make the most impact. Right now, I want Joe to win. And we've been having conversations about joining the cabinet in a technology facing role.

• 47:50Scott Galloway?

  Yep.

• 47:50Speaker 04

  Something to try and address some of the issues that we, you and I talked about earlier on. Yeah, I just want to do good work, man. It's like, it's what, you know, what drives me. Certainly, I'm very open to running for office again because I've learned now more than ever that we need to speed up, that our government is not designed to solve these problems in a meaningful way. And you talked about the incentives of university administrators. The incentives of politicians are not actually to like make big changes or solve problems either. It's to accrue resources and political capital, avoid scandalous press coverage because you did something, you know, like reprehensible, or like you harassed someone, or like, you know, like, like something awful. And that, I pretty much listed all of your incentives.

• 48:35Speaker 04

  It's not like, hey, did you actually address the imbalances in our education system that have been building up for generations? No, it's like, are you actually going to address the tech platforms that are now more powerful than our government? In many respects, they're having a bigger impact on our life. It's like, no, it's like, they're not actually being judged on the merits of the government's performance, which is one reason why everyone's, and look at what this pandemic. I mean, like, we are the biggest fiasco globally in terms of our ability to handle this because of like our failed government. And a lot of people will put that at the feet of Donald Trump, which he deserves certainly like a whole lot of credit. But there were failures at every level of government.

• 49:19Speaker 04

  You look at the CDC's decisions, like there were a lot of embarrassing bureaucratic missteps there. FDA, same thing, like, you know, we had like months to try and build up testing and contact tracing, and it hasn't worked. So. This is the challenge, man. It's like, it's like a turnaround where if you came upon like a really big organization like the UCs and you looked up and you said, hey, these people are constitutionally unable to cut costs. Like, what the hell do we do here? It's a little bit like that where you get to the government and you're like, okay, like, these people are constitutionally unable to do anything that's against their political interests. Like, what do we do with this?

• 50:00Speaker 04

  And so, so like, one of the things I have to do is I have to make it so that it's in people's political interest to solve problems. And the most obvious problem right now is that there are tens of millions of Americans who do not have enough money to like get through the next number of weeks and months. Seventy-four percent of Americans think emergency cash relief is a good idea. Like, tens of millions of Americans got $1,200 in cash in April, and they loved it. So, so this is like my lever right now is like, okay, what's the big problem I can solve that will try and align the interest of politicians with the people? Cash relief, universal basic income. Education, I think, will be very effective because middle-class Americans and aspiring Americans are fed up with the fact that,

• 50:44Speaker 04

  like you said, they look up and say, how the hell is college $60,000? Like, that makes no sense. But I hope to be in position where I can actually start pulling policy levers sometime in the next number of months, because, like, the problems are getting worse, unfortunately. And you, to me, are one of the key thinkers on actually speaking honestly and bluntly about just how severe a lot of these problems are.

• 51:10Scott Galloway?

  So if there's a chief innovation officer position in the cabinet and you get that, obviously, that would be a great platform. What if, what if that doesn't happen? What if Trump's reelected or Biden chooses someone else for that role? What is that platform, though? I don't even know where you live. Would you ever consider running for governor or senate? And if so, where would that be? And what would the role be?

• 51:33Speaker 04

  You and I are neighbors, Scott. I actually, like, I have a place on the west side of Manhattan.

• 51:39Scott Galloway?

  Oh, yeah?

• 51:39Speaker 04

  So that's where my kids are signed up to go to school in New York City, you know, in the fall.

• 51:46Scott Galloway?

  Would you ever consider a run against Schumer or Cuomo?

• 51:48Speaker 04

  I mean, people are asking me to consider various New York-based runs. Like, there was like a campaign to draft me to run for mayor. There's, you know, there are people who are looking to have me run for other offices in New York.

• 52:01Scott Galloway?

  That just feels kind of right as rain. Yang for mayor. What's wrong with that? Why wouldn't you do that?

• 52:08Speaker 04

  We're gonna look at it, for sure. I mean, right now, my focus is on helping Joe win and trying to address some of the nation-scale problems. But, yeah, like, we're looking at different things. The key thing is, like, I'm driven by the same things I was driven by when I decided to run for president, which is we have these massive problems. Our political class is generally not up for it. And so we have to change it as quickly as we can. Given the excesses we both see, if there were a couple of big policies that you'd love to see in place, let's say I'm the Secretary of Innovation, and then I call you up and say, "All right, Scott, let's solve some problems." You'd be like, "Okay, here'd be like my, you know, two or three top priorities."

• 52:50Scott Galloway?

  I think we need to start taxing endowments to universities that don't grow their freshman seeds faster than population growth. That means they're no longer public servants or nonprofits. They're luxury brands. It's ridiculous that Harvard has the endowment of the GDP of Norway and has decided to constrict supply. That means they're no longer in the business of public service. They're in the business of being Hermes. And they should be, which is their, I believe in private property. It's their decision. But they should be considered a private enterprise, and they should be taxed.

• 53:21Speaker 04

  Scott, you're not gonna believe this.

• 53:23Scott Galloway?

  Yeah.

• 53:24Speaker 04

  One of the policies I ran on was the Harvard tax, which is, I said, if you happen to have an endowment over 25 billion, which is only one school, then you need to invest like all of the gains from your endowment in a new campus in one of these states. And it was like Ohio, Michigan, Florida. Because my joke was that it's like, how the hell are you opening a Shanghai campus and not like, you know, Saginaw campus or whatnot? Like, it didn't make any sense. Because we're subsidizing you to the tune of billions of dollars. So anyway, just want to let you know, it's like, you wouldn't believe it. But like, you know, I actually had something called the Harvard tax on the books. But you're right, we should do it to every school.

• 54:03Scott Galloway?

  And I think Stanford's now above 25 billion dollars. But I love that. Why isn't Stanford opening a satellite campus in Mississippi?

• 54:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, indeed.

• 54:11Scott Galloway?

  They call me and say, Stanford's applications have tripled in the last 30 years. They haven't increased their freshman class size 1%. Because again, we're all drunk on exclusivity and want to be the person with the degree that no one else can get. But I love the idea. And they claim that they're space constrained, which they might be, because the Palo Alto Community Board doesn't want them to build more buildings and increase traffic. But why wouldn't they need to? If NYU can have something in Abu Dhabi and Wharton can have something in Singapore, then why wouldn't Stanford or Harvard have something in Detroit? Or, you know, in some of the more lower income or harder hit communities? I think that's a fantastic idea. I think the second thing we need is class traders. And what do

• 54:55Scott Galloway?

  I mean by that? I think we need deans who are gonna stop awarding tenure. I think tenure, I think there are certain departments in universities that need the protection from the current administration or, you know, are saying provocative, even sometimes, you know, distasteful things. The basic notion of tenure is that You know, if you say the world isn't flat, you don't get burned at the stake and you have intellectual freedom. But the reality is, Andrew, at a place like the business school I work, we haven't said anything that interesting in 30 years. Recommended changes to GAAP accounting are not that controversial. And tenure has gone from protecting a thought and provoking a conversation to basically the world's most expensive guild and union

• 55:40Scott Galloway?

  that creates a total lack of accountability and expense that directly translates to debt on young people. So I think we're going to need some class traders to say, we have to hold ourselves accountable. We have to get more efficient. We have to lower our cost structure. I like the idea of incorporating big and small tech to dramatically expand enrollments. I like the idea of having state systems have a hybrid model where you go to Cal State or a junior college for two years and then to a name brand school, thereby cutting costs by about 40%.

• 56:18Scott Galloway?

  And I think we need, I think we need a dramatic, dramatic cooperate, grand bargain with state and local governments. It says, look, we need you to, if you increase our budget by 20%, we'll increase our enrollments by 50% and take it back. Take, take the university system back to where it needs to be. And that is the greatest upward lubricant of the middle class as opposed to the vehicle for casting. So I think there's a, I think there's a ton of opportunity. I think it comes down to obviously will, resources, creativity. But it's, it's something I'm passionate about. I think it's, I think there's a, I think the crisis presents a tremendous opportunity.

• 56:59Scott Galloway?

  I mean, you realize, Andrew, in the next 12 months, these high tuition, high experience, kind of low brand or high acceptance rate universities, and there's hundreds, if not thousands of them across the US. They could be to education where what department stores are to retail. We could have a thousand universities begin a death march starting September 1. And that's upsetting. That's going to be chaos, but there's an opportunity to rethink certification, education. You know, it's, it's going to take big thinking. It's going to take bold ideas. Unfortunately, we have so many dumpster fires that it doesn't feel like it's the kind of thing we can focus on. So hopefully, you know, when Biden gets elected, it'll free us up.

• 57:43Scott Galloway?

  To not focus on all the agita, all the hate, all the bullshit, and we can start focusing on some of these problems. Right now, it just feels like everyone's just way too distracted.

• 57:52Speaker 04

  The comparison between these universities and department stores, I think, is really powerful and apt and compelling. And one of the things I said on the trail is like, "Look, these malls don't just disappear. They become these derelict ghost malls that are toxic to environments. They depress property values. They become havens for crime." They are what I call negative infrastructure, where they go from having positive value to negative value really quickly. If you have these campuses around the country that have the lights go out, it's the same thing, where you'd have infrastructure go from being very valuable to being very, very depressive in days or weeks. So it makes sense to me that we need to do something

• 58:36Speaker 04

  to try and repurpose some of these physical plants and institutions to do something that we need. Because you look up and say, "Of course, we're going to need more education for more people." What you said is correct, that you're going to have the winner-take-all economy play out in education as well, where it's like, "Why am I going to pay top dollar for this lesser institution, lesser credential, when UCLA is going to come up with this hybrid offering that I can then take advantage of, and it's going to be more efficient and like a better credential?" And so, we have to do something with like the hundreds of schools that are going to shut their doors. You know, it's like, there is an opportunity,

• 59:19Speaker 04

  but it is going to be a situation where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

• 59:22Scott Galloway?

  Agreed.

• 59:22Speaker 04

  And in some cases, the poor getting poorer are going to be institutions like historically black colleges and universities. You know, they have like skeletal endowments. And like, if anyone's going to take a hit and not be able to survive, unfortunately, it's some of those institutions. So it's another area where, like you said, you like, you need massive rethinking and investment. And there's, there are only two plausible sources. Number one, philanthropy, which in my case, in my opinion, is a bust. Like, it's not going to be at that scale. Like maybe, like you said, some of these schools will be able to turn to their alumni and say, "Hey, bail us out, bail us out." Like, you know, you'll have a couple survive on that basis. But it really has to be the public sector again, and there does need to be a grand bargain.

• 1:00:06Speaker 04

  The problem is that these schools haven't had to pay a price. And if you're an institution where like you've only known one direction and you've been able to like, you know, ratchet up prices, you are, as you said, constitutionally unable to turn around and say, "Okay, it's time to get ruthless." Like, you know, these 10 amazing vice deans or whatever, like, four of you have to go. You know, you turn to the professor and say like, "Hey, your teaching load's about to go up." And then you turn to the other person, like, they're just not, like, a lot of these institutions would shut down before they would make those kinds of decisions.

• 1:00:42Scott Galloway?

  Do you have, what is the action item? What's the call to arms? We have the election and, I don't know, how many days away is it? 100 days or something? What's the call to arms? What can young people or anyone listening thinks? You know, "I want to help." What do you think is the most effective way to help right now?

• 1:01:01Speaker 04

  Number one, help yourself. I mean, this is a terrible time, you know? Like, we have to look out for ourselves and like, and say like, "It's okay to be depressed or stressed out and take a break." Number two is help the people around you in your own life. Right. Because you know people are struggling. And if you have the wherewithal, if you can like contribute to, you know, like, for example, if there's like someone you know who's like out of work, be like, "Look, like, I just Venmo people randomly." You know, it's like...

• 1:01:27Scott Galloway?

  No, I have this, I have this, I have this rule called, or this, "Be a baller." And that is when I was growing up, I had a bunch of crazy jobs. I was a box boy, I was a barback, I parked cars at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, I was a pool boy at the Mondrian Hotel. And on a regular basis, Andrew, some total stranger would give me 10, 20, 50 bucks. And for, if you're at UCLA and you're living on top ramen and bananas, which I was during the summers... You know, it was kind of life changing. It meant you could go on a date. It meant you could have a full tank of gas, which was a luxury. Uh, and it just changed my, it would change, it wouldn't change my life, but it would change my week.

• 1:02:07Scott Galloway?

  And then I think being, I call it being a baller and that is over tip. If you're in a position where you have some economic security, you don't need a lot. Giving the delivery guy, the woman putting your food in the backseat of your car, whatever it is. Giving them 10, 20, 50 bucks, it can, it can literally be uh, life changing for that moment. And so many people did it to me. You're in.

• 1:02:29Speaker 04

  Yeah. So be a, be a baller. And then if you want to try and make uh, changes at like a, a large scale level, my organization, movehumanityforward.com. Um, we've given out $7 million in direct economic relief. We're trying to help candidates around the country who want to try and solve problems. Uh, and then a bigger picture, you know, and in my view, we gotta get Joe into the White House. And then if, then there'll be Secretary Yang of something or other, and then hopefully, and then Scott on some advisory uh, board, and then we'll, we'll get to work. Um, but it's not going to happen by accident. So we just gotta go do it.

• 1:03:03Scott Galloway?

  I wonder, and I, this is my advice to you. I think Mayor Yang is a more influential role. If you're in the cabinet, you, you're going to have less impact across a broader uh, broader population, but you could experiment with UBI in certain boroughs. You could, I mean, you basically president of, you know, the 19th largest country in the world versus being, being in the cabinet. Now I've decided we're running, we're running for mayor, Andrew. We're running for mayor.

• 1:03:34Speaker 04

  We will have further conversations about this, Scott. Uh, but thank you, man. This is a first of many. I, I had a blast. And uh, yeah, we should make this semi-regular because I learn uh, a lot from you every time.

• 1:03:45Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, I appreciate that, Andrew. And like I said, I, I think the most, you know, in the world of academia, what we're supposedly charged with is not being right or wrong, but catalyzing a conversation. And you catalyzed a conversation. You know, UBI, when I first heard it, I thought that makes no sense and I didn't like it. And I'm like immediately kind of checked back to this notion of socialism. And then the more I heard you speak, the more it really evolved my thinking around what are creative solutions. For moving us forward and leveling up some of our disenfranchised cohorts and kind of the economic apartheid that I'd like to think unwittingly we've ended up with in

• 1:04:25Scott Galloway?

  the US. So anyways, I'm in, I'm planning our first event. I don't know what it's gonna be. It's gonna be a coffee clatter, a virtual fundraiser. Just let me know when you're announcing.

• 1:04:36Speaker 04

  Thank you, Scott. You'll be among the first to hear. And I appreciate the sentiment. You know, it's like for me, there's a balance like with everything. It's like, I appreciate everything I've done, but you know, like I gotta solve the problem. Like, you know, we gotta actually get this thing across the finish line because this country is falling apart. And you know, it's gonna be people like you and I that hopefully can help pull it together.

• 1:04:57Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, more, more you than me, but I appreciate it. All right, brother. Thanks for the time.

• 1:05:03Scott Galloway?

  And we'll do this again. And like I said, Yang, go Yang.

• 1:05:08Speaker 04

  Thank you, Scott. Appreciate the heck out of you. All the best to the family.

• 1:05:11Scott Galloway?

  Thanks, brother. Likewise.

• 1:05:20Scott Galloway?

  So something I think we can all take away from Andrew Yang is that to be self-aware, to be self-actualized and to be courageous is to say, how do I want to change the world? And how could I do that? And to be totally unafraid. One of our past guests, Scott Harrison, decided he was going to get on a mercy ship and start taking pictures of kids with deformities to try and inspire funds to go to, I believe it was Doctors Without Borders, and then decided he'd start raising money to build wells in Africa. I think that's fearless. I think when you're a club promoter and decide you're gonna start bringing potable water to Sub-Saharan Africa, that that requires a certain level of fearlessness. And I think Andrew Yang

• 1:06:02Scott Galloway?

  brings a certain level of fearlessness. I think if you're in a position where you're somewhat economically secure, where you feel as if you have some skills, where you you live in a free country that provides you with opportunities and freedoms, there is a little bit of crazy in each of us that you should pay attention to. I'm not suggesting you run for president. I'm not suggesting you give up your job and start building wells in Africa. I'm suggesting that you listen to that voice and that you'd say, what if I had no fear? What if I wasn't worried about what other people would think about me? What if I wasn't worried about failing? What would that be? And you might decide on a risk-adjusted level not to pursue that path. I've said to kids, don't follow your passion.

• 1:06:46Scott Galloway?

  Find what you're good at and then become great at it. And the accoutrements of being great at something will make you passionate about whatever that is. And I believe that. But there is something in you that you want to do, or you think you could add value. And ask yourself, what if you had no fear? What would be your opportunity to add value to the rest of the world? I'm not talking about opening a restaurant or trying out for the New York Jets. I'm talking about what is it you would want to do to impact the world? And if you didn't have any fear, how would you get there?

• 1:07:16Scott Galloway?

  Our producers are Caroline Shager and Drew Burrows. If you like what you heard, please follow, download, and subscribe. Thank you for listening. We'll catch you next week with another episode of the Prof G Show from Section 4 and the Westwood One Podcast Network.