Office Hours: Prof G's Best Advice

For our first Office Hours episode of the new year, we’re highlighting Scott’s most helpful advice. We hope this helps you start 2023 on the right foot. Enjoy! Music: https://www.davidcuttermusic.com / @dcuttermusic 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.

• 0:01Speaker 00

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• 0:28Speaker 01

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• 1:08Scott Galloway?

  Welcome to a very special episode of the Prop G Pod's Office Hours. Every month here at Prop G, we receive dozens of questions about big life decisions. Some of you want help figuring out where to live, or a career move to make next, or how to be a better friend, partner, or colleague. So to start the new year off on a high note, we're highlighting some of the most helpful advice that our producers think we gave to you. What a thrill! Oh my God, it's the Yoda of everything. Yoda to the Yoda. And as always, we love hearing your questions, so please submit them by sending a voice recording to [email protected]. Again, that's [email protected]. Question number one.

• 1:50Speaker 03

  Hey, Prof G. My name's Will. I live in LA. I work in the advertising tech space, and I'm a rapid listener. I've charted out a path to business school, and I think I have a real shot at a top-tier MBA. But in recent reflection, I realize my happiness is always going to be capped unless I'm working for myself. It seems like half of a great MBA program is just recruiting back into the corporate world. I'd love to keep doors open in case things don't work out, but does a full-time MBA make sense for entrepreneurship?

• 2:22Speaker 03

  Appreciate the advice.

• 2:23Scott Galloway?

  Well, from Los Angeles, that's a really good question. What is the value of a top tier MBA as it relates to entrepreneurship? First off, when I got out of business school 20 odd years ago, there were two people in my entire class starting a business. One was me and the other was my partner. Nobody started businesses. That has changed. And now I think something like a third or half of HBS's graduating class is going to be either starting a business or joining a startup. So much of this is situational. The first is what kind of school you get into. I do believe that a top 20 MBA, it's basically 19 or 20 months if you have the money. Kind of hard to go wrong. It's just, it's great certification for the rest of your life.

• 3:08Scott Galloway?

  You make great contacts. It's a shit ton of fun. You get to kind of go back to college and have a little bit of a rested adolescence or revisit your adolescence. I went to business school at the Ha School at Berkeley and it was just great going back to football games. But at the same time, if you already have kids, you already have a mortgage, you're killing it at work, you have access to capital to start your own business, maybe you don't need business school. So it's situational, but if you get into a great school, and a lot of these questions are moot. It's like, well, I kind of sense that probably the next step is for you to apply and see where you get in and then wring your hands around these questions. I can't stand when kids come to my office hours and say, should I go to work for Google or Amazon? I'm like, do you have offers from both? They're like, no. I'm like, what the? You don't have a fucking decision. You don't have offers.

• 3:51Scott Galloway?

  Get out of my office or, you know, wait till this is a real decision or problem. If you're thinking about business school, apply. And if you have a really high bar and you have opportunities costs, then apply to your two or three dream schools. And if you don't get in, let the market make a decision. Then you go start a business. It does help. There's, there's a lot of very well-publicized stories about the most successful entrepreneurs in the world, not only not going to business school, but dropping out. Assume you are not that person. There are tremendous skills you garner in business school. But if you get into a great school, if you're not already kind of at letter C or D with a startup. And you have the wherewithal to go to a great school. You can afford it, or you get a scholarship.

• 4:34Scott Galloway?

  You have the freedom and the flexibility. Then I'd say, go for it. You're incredibly blessed. Very few people, 99.99% of America can't go to business school. If you have kids, it probably means you can't go. If you don't have access to a quarter of a million dollars in capital or debt, if you're not freakishly remarkable and do really well on the GMAT, all those things, all these moons have to line up for you to go to an elite MBA. So I would say, boss, if you have the opportunity, the 20, the 19 to 22 months to get an MBA, oh, my gosh, it goes so fast. It was transformative for me. But I think it's very impactful in terms of contacts, domain expertise, credibility for starting a business.

• 5:18Scott Galloway?

  So unless you're already off and running, boss, punch that ticket. Go get an MBA. Become part of the Navy SEALs of an information age business economy.

• 5:25Speaker 04

  Question number two. Hi, Prop G. My name is Mark, and I'm a longtime listener of your podcasts. Given your recent relocation to London, I thought you would be a great person to provide insights to the following question that my wife and I have been pondering. I teach at a high school in LA and have been asked to join a school in Sydney. My wife works at AWS and has been given an opportunity to lead a team in London. So the question is, what framework would you use to help inform our decision-making process? What would be the top things to consider prior to making one of these moves? How did you decide on London versus moving to another city you might have been considering?

• 6:07Speaker 04

  Maybe one last piece of information that can help clarify our situation. We're in our late 40s, in good health, fairly mobile with two kids away in college. One that you're on Mater Berkeley and the other in the state you used to call home until very recently.

• 6:22Scott Galloway?

  Mark, what a wonderful message. And congratulations on raising what sounds like two really impressive kids and the good work you do. This decision is so personal. So, a couple of things. One, would you rather spend a lot of time traveling throughout Southeast Asia and Asia, or spend more time traveling through Europe? One of the reasons I moved to London is that I wanted to spend more time in the great capitals of Europe. I think I have spent probably 60 days plus in 17 of the 20 super cities around the world. And my observation is loosely speaking, America is still the best place to make money, but Europe is the best place to spend it. And I'm at a stage in my life where I want to slow down a bit, spend more money, really

• 7:06Scott Galloway?

  enjoying myself, and I thought Europe is the right place to do that. I also have roots in London. My parents are from there. Do you have any roots or anything that would give you a sense of family, or any affinity, or anything tugging at your heart that puts you in Sydney? The professional opportunity. Where would your quality of life be better? London, even with the pound crashing, I think is still likely more expensive than Sydney, but that depends on the economic opportunities or the salary you and your wife would get. I do think Sydney is a bit more remote than London. I think it is easier to get back even to the West Coast from London than it is from Sydney. I've always just thought we'd all live in Sydney if it wasn't so damn far.

• 7:49Scott Galloway?

  But even getting around Asia from Sydney, it's a lot of travel. So this is such a personal decision. Where are your kids more likely to visit? Where do you feel like there'll be more professional upside? Where do you envision yourself on weekends? Would you rather be in Munich for Oktoberfest, or on the Amalfi Coast, or going to Ireland? Or would you rather be exploring, you know, going to Singapore and checking out Thailand and going to the wonderful cities in Australia, including Melbourne, which I always thought was underrated. I've always thought, I don't want to say Sydney's overrated because it's such a spectacular city, but I've always just absolutely loved Melbourne. I think Australia is singularly one of the, not only one of the best cultures in

• 8:34Scott Galloway?

  the world, but it feels very American to me. And I mean that in the best way. They're a rugged entrepreneurial, rough and tumble group of people that love humor and love, you know, they kind of embrace sport and embrace a certain comity or camaraderie of man, very patriotic. I've just always thought that Australians and, you know, Americans are kind of brothers from another mother, if you will. So this is such a good problem. My decision was pretty straightforward. My parents are from there. I've always felt a pull. I wanted my kids to experience a different culture. I thought that would be

• 9:15Scott Galloway?

  a gift from us to them. And we're football crazy and thought it would just be a great excuse to go to a bunch of football games in different stadiums around Europe with our kids while they're still school age. What a great problem. Congratulations on all your success. And do me a favor, ping me and let me know what you decide to do. And thanks for your good work. LAUSD public school teachers are doing God's work. Thanks so much for your contribution.

• 9:45Scott Galloway?

  We have one quick break before our final question. Stay with us.

• 9:52Scott Galloway?

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• 10:34Scott Galloway?

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• 10:57Scott Galloway?

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• 11:09Scott Galloway?

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• 11:54Scott Galloway?

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• 12:17Scott Galloway?

  Welcome back. Question number three.

• 12:19Speaker 05

  I'm a new listener to the show and I've really enjoyed hearing your perspective. I've been at my job nine and a half years and I love it. I get to do work that I'm good at and enjoy, have a great team, work for a business I believe in, and have comfortable work-life balance. I've also advanced from my role here and gotten promotions and raises in that time. I'm not really interested in leaving, but I'm concerned that staying in one place too long may hurt my marketability as a job candidate down the road. It seems like in today's job market, people jump roles every three to five years. Is being at one company too long seen as a negative for hiring managers? Is there a right amount of time to stay in one place? Thanks for your help.

• 12:57Scott Galloway?

  Caroline from Atlanta, a really thoughtful question. I just can tell by the way you articulate the question and how you've thought this through that you're a thoughtful person and I get the sense you're probably a good manager. Anyway. First off, you know, ask yourself some basic questions. Do you have senior level sponsorship? Do you enjoy what you do? Do they appreciate what you do? Do you see opportunities for growth? Is the company you're at doing well? You'd rather be good at Google than great at General Motors. And so all of these things, you have to make sort of a qualitative assessment. And if the answer is yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, then you should be apt to stay. Now, having said this, having said this, you are going to be more attractive to strangers. It's strange. We're just more attracted.

• 13:40Scott Galloway?

  When we recruit, when we onboard, when we recruit CEOs, we have a bias towards bringing in someone new. Because the, the people you don't know are easy to create a mythology around them and think that they're superhuman. And what you find out is that no one is superhuman. And you discount the qualities of the people who are just below the CEO. And you're sort of tempted to bring in someone thinking that they might be amazing. And here's the thing, your employers or your bosses have a tendency to look at you through the lens through which you came in. And I purposely tried to check myself. I work with a kid now, and I say he's a kid. He just turned 50. I've been working with him for 25 years, maybe 27. I hired him out of Yale at my first company, Profit.

• 14:25Scott Galloway?

  And he went back to law school, did really well at a, at a law firm. And, but we've sort of been working together off and on for the better part of three decades. But I can't help seeing him through the lens of some bright little dopey kid right out of Yale. And then I realized, no, he's an incredibly experienced expert even in the legal field. Good manager, seasoned professional. And what you have to do, or a company's need to do, is one, look at, look at the person through the lens of who they are now and who they've evolved to. And two, imagine them leaving. This is what I do. Now, you're on the other side of that, and that is. You need to help them imagine that you can leave.

• 15:10Scott Galloway?

  What do I mean by that? I don't think it's a bad idea to every two or three years, do a market check. What do I mean by that? Return a call from a recruiter, maybe talk to a friend about their company, maybe even interview somewhere, have an informational coffee, and do a market check on the economic and non-economic rewards you might get if you moved. The majority of people who advance really fast usually switch jobs, I don't think every three years, but maybe every five to seven years, because again, there's a halo, there's a round up, if you will, effect to our impression of people

• 15:54Scott Galloway?

  who work somewhere else we don't know as well. It's like that saying, the functional families are the ones you don't know. We have a tendency to romanticize an outsider. What did I do at NYU Stern? When I first started at NYU Stern, they paid me $12,000. Think about that. I'd just come out of an internet company. It was 2002. I'd just moved to New York. I wanted to teach and I took a job and they paid me a whopping $12,000 a year. Ultimately, I worked up to about 200 grand a year, plus housing, plus benefits. The reason I got there was two reasons. And I don't know which was more important. One, I'm good at what I do. I put a lot of butts in seats. My class was very popular. At the end of the day, business school is a business.

• 16:39Scott Galloway?

  So being good is the number one or the number two. Now, either the number one or the number two is, you know what I would do? I would do market checks on a regular basis. And that is, I would get a call from a Wharton or a Cornell or another school, and I would entertain the conversation and get a sense for what the opportunities were there in terms of role, in terms of compensation, in terms of opportunities. And then I would go to my department chair, the dean, and say, very transparently, I like it here. I don't want to leave. This is my market value. I expect you to match it. And I wouldn't threaten to leave, but that was an implicit threat. It was like, look, I'm attractive to strangers. I need to be attractive to you. And quite frankly, a really good organization will stay ahead of the curve here and give you

• 17:23Scott Galloway?

  raises ahead of the curve. That's what a good manager does. Now you have to decide whether you work for an organization that is forward leaning and figures out a way to constantly surprise and delight and stay out of the curve. And there are a lot of companies like that. I think big tech is really good at that. I think they identify their key players and say, we're going to make it such that you never need to do a market check. We're going to stay ahead of the curve. That is a smart company. That is a good manager. I'd say two thirds of companies aren't like that. One caveat, you don't want to do this more than once every two or one years. And that is the person who is constantly in your face about compensation. You set up a dynamic as the person who's been on the other side of this conversation,

• 18:07Scott Galloway?

  where you don't want to give them a raise. You're constantly fighting with them and coming up with reasons for why they shouldn't get a raise. You don't want to set up that dynamic on a infrequent but credible basis. You want to have this conversation if needed. Thanks for the question.

• 18:28Scott Galloway?

  That's all for this episode. Again, if you'd like to submit a question, please email a voice recording to [email protected].

• 18:45Scott Galloway?

  Our producers are Caroline Shageran, Claire Miller, and Drew Burrows. Sammy Resnick is our associate producer. If you like what you heard, please follow, download, and subscribe. Thank you for listening to the Prop G Pod from the Vox Media Podcast Network. We will catch you next week.

• 19:00Speaker 06

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• 19:31Speaker 07

  Every industry reaches a moment when technology changes the rules.

• 19:36Speaker 08

  Wealth management may just be in that moment, right now.

• 19:39Speaker 07

  Join Greg Gates from LPL and Peter Nolan from Anthropic for a candid conversation on agentic AI and the future of financial advice.

• 19:47Speaker 08

  Where the industry is headed.

• 19:48Speaker 07

  And how advisors can stay ahead of it. Listen now.