Pod Insights The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway Scott on Losing His Dad, Family Traditions, and Handling Criticism About this episode Scott Galloway reflects on losing a parent and what grief teaches us, shares the traditions he’s building with his sons, and explains how he’s learned to deal with public criticism.
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1:35 Scott Galloway? Welcome to Office Hours of Prop G. This is the part of the show where we answer your questions about business, tech, entrepreneurship, and whatever else is on your mind. If you'd like to submit a question for next time, you can send a voice recording to officehoursofpropgmedia.com. Again, that's officehoursofpropgmedia.com, or post your question on the Scott Galloway subreddit, and we just might feature it on our next episode. Question number one comes from Manuel Rapata on Instagram. Manuel asked, "How are you doing seven months after your dad passed? Any advice for someone who just lost their dad?" It's a generous question. The reality is I'm fine. I sort of mourn my dad's passing for the last five years of his life. And this is gonna sound, this is gonna sound harsh,
2:17 Scott Galloway? but my dad got a lot more from our relationship than I got from our relationship. My dad wasn't, he wasn't a bad father. I think my father, I've always said that if you rated childhoods in America, I would come in exactly at the 50th percentile. We were upper, lower, middle class, raised by a single immigrant mother, lived and died a secretary, didn't have much money, money was an issue. But at the same time, I lived in Los Angeles, I had friends, you know, we weren't hungry. My mom loved me a great deal. You know, it just wasn't that bad. I played, you know, my parents got divorced. And it was just like, not terrible, not great. It was just
2:58 Scott Galloway? sort of, I would describe my childhood as remarkably unremarkable, just perfectly average. But my mom invested hugely in me. And my mom's death, really, I'm still 22 years after my mother's death, I am more impacted by it than my dad's death seven months ago. You know, my dad basically, you know, started his third marriage while he was still married to my mom, his second wife. And he tried, there were some moments where he did make an effort, you know, he'd haul his ass in a car over the hill to get me every other weekend. But then, he was a different age. He just left for Ohio and he just wasn't very involved in my life. He tried, but we weren't, you know, we had
3:43 Scott Galloway? a nice relationship. We were more like friends as adult men. But I still struggle with, I still miss my mom. And I've decided it's a feature, not a bug, and that I hope my kids, 20 years after I passed, still get emotional when they talk about me and miss, and miss me. But I'm fine. I appreciate the question. You know, I don't know if I have any real advice. I think this stuff is so individual, but what I would say is, try and register the emotions. And just in general, you know, grieving.
4:23 Scott Galloway? Love's receipts are anxiety and grief. I get, I'm that parent. My 15 year old wasn't home till really late the other night. I'm that parent now, up, anxious, you know, want him to have a good time, so don't want to bother him via text, but checking the Uber app to see if he's in an Uber or checking, you know, wondering when he's gonna be home, and I basically can't sleep. And then I have another son, I've been a fucking mess this year over my son applying to college. I think I was more stressed out about it than him. And that's because, for the first time in my life, I care more about something more than I care about me, someone or someone. And it's incredibly taxing.
5:06 Scott Galloway? It's just, Jesus Christ, the anxiety and worry. But that's the receipts for love, and that is, the receipts are the trade off for purpose. For the first time in my life, I have purpose. My purpose as a younger man used to be, how can I be more rich and more awesome? And how can I have more experiences, more cool friends, more women in my life, more fame, more admiration? And it led to a series of deep, kind of, or what I would say, kind of shallow and meaningless experiences. But as far as shallow and meaningless experiences go, it was pretty good at times. But anyways, that's neither here nor there. But for the first time, I really feel as if I have a purpose.
5:51 Scott Galloway? And that's when, not even when my kids were born, but slowly but surely, I love what Frasier Crane said about his son or when someone else, by the way, Frasier Crane was a shitty father. Did you ever notice that? He sees his dad like once every two seasons. But he said something that really struck with me, and it really held true for me. And that is, I didn't love my son. I wasn't in love when they first came out of the womb. I fell in love with my kids. Very selfish, struggled the first one or two years, but now they're my purpose. I feel in a weird, kind of macabre sense that like, if I died tomorrow, it would be... Sad, but not a tragedy, because I feel as if I found my purpose. I know I'm having
6:32 Scott Galloway? a positive impact on their lives. I think they're going to be patriotic, loving men. So that's why I'm here. I finally figured out, okay, why I'm here and what is my purpose. My dad never found that in terms of parenting, and I never felt that emotionally involved or committed to my father. And also, he led a really nice life. He died at the age of 95 with, basically, his fifth wife was this really lovely Latino woman. He had a nice life. He swam every day up until the age of like 91. Last year was tough, but that's not terrible. But I would say that if you're struggling, know that that's, that's because
7:16 Scott Galloway? you loved your father so much and your father loved you. And that's just part of the game that, that that is what we feel. The depth of our emotions and our commitment and our love for someone and how much they love us is directly correlated to the grief you're gonna feel. So, give yourself a statute of limitations. If you're still sad in six months, okay, fine. If you find it's getting away in your, of your life, as it was with mine, in terms of inability to move on, then decide at some point you're going to seek outside help. Either talk to friends about it, go to grief counseling, go to therapy, whatever is involved to try and get unstuck, if you will. So, again, what do I wish for
7:59 Scott Galloway? anyone moving forward? I wish them a great deal of joy, but also a great deal of grief. Because what that means is that you've had people in your life, as it appears you have, that you loved a great deal and loved you a great deal. That's just, that's just part of the, that's part of the game, my brother. Thanks for the question. Question number two comes from Elizabeth Buchanan on LinkedIn. What's the most important and meaningful tradition in your home that you believe, hope your sons will continue if they have families of their own? That's a really good question. We do. As a family, spend a lot of time and energy on family trips. We, that's our thing. We sort of, we do a lot of vacations together and it's freaked me out because my oldest is all of a sudden saying, you know, he's 18, he wants to be with his friends.
8:44 Scott Galloway? So, I don't know, travel a regular thing. One is a little bit more selfish and that is, we just had a question about my father. My dad got me working out when I was like nine years old. He started taking me on runs and he showed me this little Royal Navy fitness handbook. There was this tattered thing. I wish I still have it. It's probably worth millions of dollars, but burpees, pushups, pullups, air squats. And he used to take me running on the beach. We lived in Orange County for a brief time and he used to take me running and because he was in the Navy and really, really was into his fitness. My father used to win 10 Ks for like over age 50 groups in Arizona and he did, my dad was,
9:29 Scott Galloway? kind of saw himself as being really funny and charming. Whenever he was called up to take a medal, he would go up with a lit cigarette. Kind of guy he was. But my dad got me working out really early and something I do when my kids, the first thing, almost the first thing, like when my kid comes home from boarding school is I try and either work out with him or I take my sons on a run. But from a very early age, I got my sons working out and my, and I want them, it's paid dividends for me my whole life. It's been my, kind of my antidepressant and made me feel better about myself.
10:05 Scott Galloway? I am just, our family is just so extraordinarily genetically skinny, which no one feels sorry for, but if you're in high school and you're 5'10", 120 pounds with bad acne, it's not a great lug. And it would have been even worse if I had not started lifting weights and running, but it's been a real gift. And I've tried to bestow that gift on my kids. So when my kids are home for the weekend, they know we're going to be working out. They know even if when we're traveling, we're going to do some pushups. And I hope and I believe that they will, like me and my sister, inherit that from their father and it's just going to be hardwired into them. I'm sorry, I wish it was something a little bit more. I don't know, on Golden Pond. Do we watch a lot of streaming media together? Yeah, we watch a lot of football together, but I think people do that.
10:48 Scott Galloway? I would say it's, I would say it's family vacations and working out. I'm like such a media for father right now. Thanks for the question.
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14:14 Scott Galloway? That's spelled V A N T A dot com slash prof G for $1,000 off. Welcome back onto our final question from JK Ski on Instagram. They ask, "How do you deal with public criticism of your work?" Not well, but better. It used to really bum me out when, it started about five, seven years ago, I started criticizing, saying some private companies were just stupid and made no fucking sense and that they, I remember like there was some meditation app, I don't remember it, but it was raising money at a billion-dollar valuation. I said, "This is a podcast," and they've tried to reposition it as a...
14:58 Scott Galloway? A tech company and raising money to billion dollars. And I wrote a post on it. I wrote a post on Oyo. Remember that? The hotel company or that was raising money. I wrote a pretty scathing piece of WeWork and I sort of inflamed the venture community and hell hath no fury like a venture capitalist whose portfolio companies of septic tank crap you call out before they have a chance to sell their shares. And I got pretty seriously, not seriously, like attacked by the venture capital community. And I remember it really rattled me at the time. It got me very upset and angry. And then I've kind of kind of grips with the fact that if you're going to be a quote unquote thought leader commentator and you're going to speak
15:43 Scott Galloway? your mind and sort of my theme for 2026 is zero fucks given. I'm going to say what I think is right.
15:51 Scott Galloway? I think bombing Iran is actually, is absolutely the right thing to do. I think it's a historic opportunity with unbelievable asymmetric upside to bring long-term peace to the Middle East and create an incredible political and economic ally for the United States. That is a very unpopular opinion across my progressive brothers and sisters. Only 7% of Democrats support that, that action or the military action in Iran. And there's so much pressure to sign up for a political orthodoxy because online they immediately want to position you as a far left or far right. And then what happens is if you diverge from that orthodoxy, you're treated as an apostate. We thought we could trust you. And they come like, you know, you used to listen to Professor Galloway,
16:36 Scott Galloway? but he's really come off the rails, you know, blah, blah, blah. If you have economic security and people who love you unconditionally, of which I'm blessed with both those things, you have an obligation to speak your mind. So the criticism hurts, but it hurts a lot less. And also I've come to grips with the fact that if you're not getting criticism or pushback on a regular basis, you're not saying anything. You're just stating the obvious or you're just playing to the algorithms, which I find really gross. I think a lot of people sort of just put out shit and thread shit because they know it'll get, they're just kind of piling on a viewpoint that everybody has like, well, that's not that, that's not that original. And also.
17:19 Scott Galloway? Quite frankly, I get it wrong a lot. You know, I'm putting out 10 hours of podcasts a week, trying to be funny, trying to be provocative, trying to be irreverent, trying to push the boundaries of the conventional wisdom or the narrative out there to get people to think. And occasionally I just get it wrong, or I say something really fucking stupid. And you deserve critical feedback. What bothers me the most about critical feedback is not the criticism, it's the source. And that is, I believe about a third to 50% of the really aggressive negative feedback are bots. I've ended up on the wrong list, or a list, or the right list of people who are supportive of Ukraine.
17:59 Scott Galloway? And so there are troll farms, and it's AI, it's Dog Lady 115 with seven followers. And it's always the same thing. Scott, I used to like your content, but this is wrong. And I was just like, okay, the platforms could, could get rid of these fake bots. I, I believe everyone has a First Amendment right. I think anyone out there like me who's saying provocative things should be subject to criticism and learn how to absorb it and learn from it. But I don't think bots and trolls should have First Amendment rights. That's the thing that bothers me most about the really vile criticism. It's like, do the other readers realize this is not real? This is not a real person?
18:40 Scott Galloway? So I'm still coming to grips with it, but I do think at some point I'm just going to go dark. My dad said something that struck me as, or resonated with me. And he said that the key to happiness in America is to be rich but anonymous. Because once you become sort of famous, there's industrial logic in shitposting you and criticizing you. And I have found a lot of online players, especially on TikTok, play to the algorithms. Where there's one person I've been following who just says, I hate, and then name the person with the bestseller and attacks their philosophies. And people love that because the algorithms recognize a bestseller.
19:19 Scott Galloway? And it gets juiced and that person makes another, you know, $73 from AdSense or from their algorithms. So there's industrial incentives and economic incentives in not only checking back the powerful, which I think is healthy, but just constantly shitposting them. And as my footprint has grown, the level of criticism has gone up exponentially. Some of that is healthy because powerful people should be checked on what they say. But some of it is also just a function of the algorithms where if people recognize who they're criticizing, they click on it to see what they're saying about that person and it becomes sort of a downward spiral of, I don't know, just coarseness and ad hominem attacks. So in
20:01 Scott Galloway? sum, it still bothers me. It doesn't bother me as much as it used to. I try with the comments, I read the first 10 or 20 to get a feel for what people think about something and then I stop reading it because it just doesn't, I don't ever want to be shaped by the comments. I want to be informed by them. But I think the algorithms and the orthodoxy of the far left and the far right, who are the loudest part of the political spectrum, want to try and shame you or intimidate you. Can't imagine the amount of shit I got. Went halfway through the Biden administration, I said, he should not run again. He's too fucking old. He's a feeble old man. He has no business being president at this point. Oh my God. You don't
20:43 Scott Galloway? understand the assignment. And I mean, just un- advocating for men. There's just an immediate gag reflex from people who feel like, well, boss, you've had a 3,000 year head start. And if you're advocating for men, it must mean you're a misogynist and that you are one of, you know, part of the manosphere. But here's the thing, if you want to make a difference, can you imagine how much shit Muhammad Ali, I'm not comparing myself to Muhammad Ali. My jab isn't as good. I have pretty good footwork, but my jab isn't as strong. The amount of shit he got, the amount of shit he got when he turned down or he refused to enlist for the Vietnam War. I think real leaders and the people that really make a
21:24 Scott Galloway? difference are not immune, but they're not afraid of massive public criticism. The only thing you know about really making a difference is that you're going to get massive public criticism. There is no change. Anytime you challenge the status quo, you're going to get, the quo is going to criticize the shit out of you. Anyways, let me wrap up this word salad. If you don't get critical feedback, you aren't saying anything. You're just stating the obvious. That is part of the game. At the same time, you should learn from it. When you're wrong, you should acknowledge it. But here's what gives me the greatest level of comfort and what is the Neosporin for critical commentary.
22:09 Scott Galloway? I'm going to be dead soon and so are you. What I say comes from a good place and that is I'm trying to be honest. I'm trying to catalyze a conversation that results in our ability to craft better solutions. And I try to be very data driven and pursue the truth, if you will. But I also try to be unafraid. And I recognize that sometimes I'm going to say something really fucking stupid, or I'm just going to be wrong, or people who don't share my interests, or people have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo or pushing back on what I say are going to attack me. And guess what? When I'm on my deathbed, I'm not going to give a shit. I'm going to want the people who love me and I love around me, and I'm going to want to feel like I tried and that I was unafraid,
22:51 Scott Galloway? that I was dancing on tables like no one was watching, even if I don't have great rhythm, which I don't, which I don't, unless I'm drunk and there's 80s music. And then daddy is disco, capital D. Thanks for the question. That's all for this episode. If you'd like to submit a question, please email a voice recording to [email protected] . That's [email protected] . Or if you prefer to ask on Reddit, just post your question on the Scott Galloway subreddit and we might feature it in an upcoming episode. This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez and Laura Janer. Kami Rique 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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